N-cuiJL 


13. 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 


/ 


0*  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 


BOOKS  BY 
BASIL    KING 

THE  EMPTY  SACK 

THE  THREAD  OP  FLAME 

GOING  WEST 

THE  CITY  OF  COMRADES 

ABRAHAM'S  BOSOM 

THE   LIFTED   VEIL 

THE  SIDE  OF  THE  ANGELS 

THE  LETTER  OF  THE  CONTRACT 

THE  WAY  HOME 

THE  WILD  OLIVE 

THE  INNER  SHRINE 

THE  STREET  CALLED  STRAIGHT 

LET  NO  MAN  PUT  ASUNDER 

IN  THE  GARDEN  OF  CHARITY 

THE  STEPS  OF  HONOR 

THE  HIGH   HEART 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS.  NEW  YORK 
ESTABLISHED  1817 


"DEAR  OLD  MA!     STOP  CRYING,  MA!" 


[See  p.  102 


THE 
EMPTY    SACK 

By  BASIL   KING 

Author  of 

"THB  THREAD  or  FLAME"  "THE  INNER  BHRLNB" 
"TH»  crrr  OF  COMBADEB"  ETC. 

Illustrated 


Harper    £§?   Brothers 

Publishers 
New  York   and   London 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 


Copyright,  1921,  by  Harper  &  Brotheri 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

H-V 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

"DEAR  OLD  MA!    STOP  CRYING,  MA!"   .    .      Frontispiece 
"JENNIE,   You   HAVEN'T    GOT    A    HUNDRED 

DOLLARS!    TELL  ME  You  HAVEN'T!"  .    .  Facing  p.  178 
"ALL  RIGHT,  MA!    I'M  READY!" "        432 


2130725 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 


THE    EMPTY    SACK 


CHAPTER  I 

R*  COLLINGHAM  win  see  y°u  in  his 
office   before  you  go." 

Having  thus  become  the  Voice  of  Fate,  Miss 
Ruddick,  shirt-waisted  and  daintily  shod,  slipped 
away  between  the  pens  where  clerks  were  preen- 
ing themselves  before  leaving  their  desks  for  the 
day. 

The  old  man  to  whom  she  had  spoken  raised 
his  head  in  the  mild  surprise  of  an  ox  disturbed 
while  grazing.  He,  too,  was  leaving  his  desk  for 
the  day,  arranging  his  work  with  the  tidy  care 
of  one  for  whom  pens,  ink,  and  ledgers  were  the 
vital  things  of  life.  Finishing  his  task,  his  hands 
trembled.  His  smile  trembled,  too,  when  a 
young  man  in  a  neighboring  pen  called  out  in 
tones  which  mingled  sarcasm  with  encouragement : 

"Good  luck,  old  top!  Coin'  to  get  your  raise 
at  last!" 

It  was  what  he  repeated  to  himself  as  he 
shuffled  after  Miss  Ruddick.  He  was  obliged  to 
repeat  it  in  order  to  steady  his  step.  He  was 
obliged  to  steady  his  step  because  some  fifteen 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

or  twenty  pairs  of  eyes  from  all  the  pens  in  the 
office  were  following  him  as  he  went  along.  It 
was  the  last  bit  of  pride  in  the  man  marching 
up  to  face  a  firing  squad. 

He  had  reached  the  glass  door  on  which  the 
word  "  Exit "  could  be  traced  in  reversed  letters, 
when  a  breezy  young  fellow  of  twenty  startled 
him  by  a  sudden  clap  on  the  shoulder.  The  boy 
had  not  come  from  a  pen,  but  from  the  more 
distant  portion  of  the  bank  where  a  line  of 
tellers*  cages  faced  the  public. 

"Hello,  dad!  Tell  ma  I'll  be  home  for  supper. 
Off  now  for  a  plunge  at  the  gym." 

The  boy  passed  on,  leaving  behind  a  vision  of 
gleaming  teeth  and  the  echo  of  gay  tones. 

Opening  a  glass  door  and  entering  a  passage- 
way, the  old  man  stumbled  along  it  till  another 
door,  standing  open,  showed  Miss  Ruddick, 
beside  her  typewriter,  assorting  her  papers  before 
going  home.  Miss  Ruddick  was  a  competent 
woman  of  thirty-five.  She  was  in  her  present 
position  of  stenographer-secretary  to  the  head 
of  the  banking  house  because  Mr.  Bickley,  the 
efficiency  expert,  for  whose  opinion  Mr.  Col- 
lingham  had  a  kind  of  reverence,  had  selected 
her  for  the  job.  Miss  Ruddick  cultivated  her 
efficiency  as  another  woman  cultivates  her  voice 
or  another  her  gift  for  dancing.  Throwing  off 
the  weaknesses  that  spring  from  affection  and 
softness  of  heart,  she  had  steeled  and  oiled  her- 
self into  a  swiftly  working,  surely  judging,  and 
wholly  impersonal  business  automaton.  Ten 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

years  ago  she  would  have  felt  sorry  for  a  man  in 
Josiah  Follctt's  predicament.  She  would  have 
felt  sorry  for  him  now  had  she  not  learned  to  her 
cost  that  sympathy  diminished  the  accuracy  of 
her  work.  Now  she  could  turn  him  off  as  easily 
as  an  executioner  the  man  condemned  to  death. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  she  knew  that  ten  minutes 
previously  the  efficiency  expert  had  been  closeted 
with  Mr.  Collingham,  dealing  with  this  very  case. 
With  her  own  ears  she  had  heard  Mr.  Bickley 
say: 

"You  will  do  as  you  think  best,  Mr.  Colling- 
ham. Only,  I  can't  help  reminding  you  that 
once  you  admit  any  principle  but  that  of  supply 
and  demand,  business  methods  are  at  an  end." 

Miss  Ruddick  knew  Mr.  Collingham's  inner 
struggle  because  she  had  been  through  it  herself; 
but  she  knew,  too,  that  to  Mr.  Collingham  the 
efficiency  expert  was  much  what  his  physician 
is  to  a  king.  His  advice  may  be  distasteful,  but 
it  is  a  command.  The  most  merciful  thing  now 
was  rapidity  of  action,  as  with  the  application 
of  the  guillotine.  It  was  mercy,  therefore,  to 
throw  open  instantly  the  door  of  Mr.  Colling- 
ham's office,  so  that  Josiah  was  forced  to  enter. 

He  stood  meekly,  feeling,  doubtless,  as  the 
psalmist  felt  when  all  the  ends  of  the  world  had 
come  upon  him.  Confusedly  he  was  saying  to 
himself  that  all  the  threads  of  his  laborious  life, 
from  the  time  when,  as  a  boy  in  Canada,  he  had 
begun  to  earn  his  living  at  sixteen,  till  now,  when 
he  was  sixty-three,  had  been  drawn  together 

3 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

at  just  this  point,  where  he  was  either  to  get  his 
raise  or  else — 

The  suspense  was  terrible.  As  the  August 
Presence  into  which  he  had  been  ushered  was 
engaged  in  examining  the  contents  of  a  lower 
drawer  of  the  flat-topped  desk  at  which  It  was 
seated,  It  was  only  partly  visible.  All  Josiah 
could  see  was  the  shoulder  of  a  portly  form,  the 
edge  of  a  pear-shaped  pearl  in  a  plum-colored 
tie,  and  a  temple  of  grizzled  hair.  The  clerk 
moved  forward,  coming  to  a  halt  midway  be- 
tween the  door  and  the  desk  till  the  Presence 
should  recognize  his  approach  by  raising  Its  head. 

The  Presence  didn't  quite  raise  Its  head.  It 
merely  glanced  upward  in  a  casual,  sidelong  way, 
continuing  the  inspection  of  the  drawer. 

"Well,  Follett,  I  suppose  you  know  what  I've 
got  to  say?" 

Follett  betrayed  the  fact  that  he  did  know. 

"Is  it  the  same  as  you  said  two  years  ago, 
sir?" 

Thus  challenged,  the  Presence  lifted  itself, 
becoming  to  the  full  Bradley  Collingham,  the 
distinguished  banker,  philanthropist,  and  Amer- 
ican citizen,  so  widely  and  favorably  known  for 
his  sympathetic  personality.  The  essence  of 
these  traits  rang  in  the  appealing  quality  of  his 
tone. 

"What  do  you  think,  Follett?  I  told  you 
then  that  you  were  not  earning  your  salary. 
You  haven't  been  earning  it  since.  What  can 
I  do?" 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"  I  could  work  harder,  sir.  I  could  stay  over- 
time, when  none  of  the  young  fellows  want  to." 

"That  wouldn't  do  any  good,  Follett.  It  isn't 
the  way  we  do  business." 

"I've  been  five  years  with  you,  sir,  and  all 
my  life  between  one  banking  house  and  another, 
in  this  country  and  Canada.  In  my  humble 
way  I've  helped  to  build  the  banking  business 
up." 

"And  you've  been  paid,  haven't  you ?  I  really 
don't  see  that  you've  anything  to  complain  of." 

There  was  no  severity  in  this  response.  It 
was  made  only  because  the  necessities  of  the  case 
required  it,  as  Follett  had  the  justice  to  perceive. 

"I'm  not  complaining,  sir.  I  only  don't  see 
how  I'm  going  to  live." 

The  voice  already  distressed  became  more  so. 

"But  that  isn't  my  affair,  is  it,  now?  I'm 
running  a  business,  not  a  charitable  institution. 
It  isn't  as  if  you'd  been  with  us  twenty  or  thirty 
years.  You've  shifted  about  a  good  deal  in 
your  time — " 

"I've  had  to  better  myself,  sir — with  a  family." 

"Quite  so.  And  once  you  admit  any  principle 
but  that  of  supply  and  demand  business  methods 
are  at  an  end.  Don't  think  that  this  isn't  as 
hard  for  me  as  it  is  for  you,  Follett,  but — " 

"If  it  was  as  hard  for  you  as  it  is  for  me,  sir, 
you'd—" 

But,  the  possibilities  here  being  dangerous,  the 
banker  was  forced  to  cut  in: 

"Besides,  you'll  get  another  job.  Stairs  will 
5 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

write  you  any  kind  of  recommendation  you  ask 
for/' 

"Recommendations  won't  do  me  any  good,  sir, 
once  I'm  fired  for  old  age.  That's  a  worse  brand 
on  you  than  coming  out  of  jail." 

The  discussion  growing  painful,  the  banker 
rose  to  put  an  end  to  it.  Even  so,  he  had  some- 
thing still  to  say  to  justify  himself. 

"It  isn't  as  if  I  hadn't  warned  you  of  this, 
Follett.  You've  had  two  years  in  which" — it 
was  hard  to  find  the  right  phrase — "in  which  to 
provide  for  your  future." 

The  clerk  was  unable  to  repress  a  dim,  far- 
away smile. 

"Two  years  in  which  to  provide  for  my  future 
— on  forty-five  a  week!  And  me  with  five 
mouths  to  feed,  to  say  nothing  of  Teddy,  who 
pays  his  board!" 

The  banker  found  an  opening. 

"I  made  a  place  for  him — didn't  I,  now? — as 
soon  as  he  was  released  from  the  navy.  He 
ought  to  be  able  to  help  you." 

"He  does  help,  sir,  as  far  as  a  young  fellow 
can  on  eighteen  a  week  with  his  own  expenses  to 
take  care  of.  But  I've  two  little  girls  still  at 
school,  and  another,  my  eldest — '' 

A  hint  of  embarrassment  emphasized  the 
banker's  words  as  he  began  moving  forward  to 
show  his  visitor  to  the  door. 

"I  understand  that  she's  engaged  as  an  artist's 
model.  That,  too,  ought  to  bring  you  in  some- 
thing." 

6 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I  suppose  Mr.  Robert  told  you  that,  sir." 

This  was  inadvertent  on  Follett 's  part,  and  a 
mistake.  Any  other  distinguished  man  would 
have  stiffened  at  the  use  of  the  name  of  a  member 
of  his  family  in  a  connection  like  the  present  one. 
Bradley  Collingham  was  admirably  temperate 
in  saying: 

"I  don't  talk  of  such  matters  with  my  son.  I 
merely  understood  that  your  eldest  girl  was 
earning  something — " 

"She  poses  six  hours  a  week  for  Mr.  Hubert 
Wray,  at  a  dollar  an  hour." 

"She  could  probably  get  more  engagements. 
I  hear — I  forget  who  told  me — that  she's  the 
type  these  artist  people  like  to  put  into  their 
pictures." 

Finding  himself  obliged  to  keep  step  with  his 
employer,  Follett  felt  as  if  he  was  walking  to  his 
soul's  dead-march.  Only  the  force  of  the  con- 
ventions in  which  everybody  lives  enabled  him  to 
go  on  making  conversation. 

"We  don't  much  like  the  occupation  for  a 
daughter  of  ours,  sir;  and,  besides,  there's  lots 
who  think  that  being  an  artist's  model  isn't 
respectable." 

"  Still,  if  she  can  earn  good  money  at  it — " 

To  Collingham's  relief,  they  were  at  the  door, 
which  he  opened  significantly  and  without  more 
words.  Follett  looked  into  the  outer  world  as 
represented  by  Miss  Ruddick's  office  as  into  an 
abyss.  For  the  minute  it  seemed  too  awful  a 
void  to  step  into.  When  his  watery  blue  eyes 
2  7 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

again  sought  Collingham's  face,  it  was  with  the 
dumb  question,  "Must  I?"  which  the  banker 
himself  could  only  meet  with  Mr.  Bickley's 
manfulness. 

He,  too,  spoke  only  with  his  eyes:  "You  must, 
my  poor  Follett.  There's  no  help  for  it.  You 
and  I  are  both  caught  up  into  a  vast  machine. 
I  can't  act  otherwise  than  as  I'm  doing,  and  I 
know  you  don't  expect  it." 

Thus  Follett  stepped  over  the  threshold  and 
the  door  closed  behind  him.  So  short  a  time  had 
passed  since  he  had  gone  the  other  way  that  Miss 
Ruddick  was  still  beside  her  desk,  putting  away 
her  papers.  Follett  didn't  look  at  her,  but  she 
looked  at  him,  rinding  herself  compelled  to  hark 
back  to  Mr.  Bickley's  axioms  to  check  the  tears 
she  couldn't  allow  to,  rise. 


CHAPTER  II 

MEANWHILE  there  was  that  going  on 
which  would  have  disturbed  both  these 
elderly  men  had  they  known  anything  about  it. 

Jennie  Follett,  in  a  Greek  peplum  of  white- 
cotton  cloth,  her  amber-colored  hair  drawn  inta 
a  loose  Greek  knot,  was  on  her  knees  before  a 
plaster  cast  of  Aphrodite,  to  which  she  was 
holding  up  a  garland  of  tissue-paper  flowers. 

While  there  was  nothing  alarming  in  this 
pagan  act,  the  freedom  with  which  two  young 
men  laid  hands  on  her  little  person  threw  out 
hints  of  impropriety. 

The  pretexts  were  obvious,  and,  in  the  case  of 
one  of  the  young  men,  were  backed  by  what 
might  have  been  called  professional  necessity. 
One  bare  arm  needed  to  be  raised,  the  other  to 
be  lowered.  One  sandaled  foot  was  too  visible 
beneath  the  edge  of  the  peplum,  the  other  not 
visible  enough.  Adjustments  called  for  read- 
justments, and  readjustments  for  revisions  of 
the  scheme.  What  one  young  man  approved  of» 
the  other  disallowed,  to  a  running  accompani- 
ment of  Miss  Follett's  laughter. 

"Do  go  away,"  she  implored,  when  Mr.  Bob 
Collingham,  with  one  hand  beneath  her  elbow 

9 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

and  the  other  at  her  finger-tips,  tilted  her  arm 
at  what  seemed  to  him  its  loveliest  angle. 

"Clear  out,  Bob,'*  the  artist  seconded,  in  half- 
vexed  good  humor.  "We'll  never  get  the  pose 
with  you  here." 

"You'd  never  get  anything  if  I  went  away, 
because  Miss  Follett  wouldn't  work.  Would 
you,  Miss  Follett?" 

The  artist  having  gone  in  search  of  something 
at  the  far  end  of  the  studio,  Miss  Follett  replied 
to  Mr.  Collingham  alone. 

"I  don't  know  what  I'd  do  if  you  went  away; 
but  if  you  stay  I  shall  go  frantic.  If  you  touch 
me  again  I  shall  get  up." 

"I'm  not  touching  you  again,"  he  said,  going 
on  to  bend  her  left  arm  ever  so  slightly,  "because 
this  is  the  same  old  time  all  along.  The  picture 
is  all  I  care  about." 

"But  it's  Mr.  Wray's  picture.    It  isn't  yours." 

"It  will  be  if  I  buy  it.  I  said  I  would  if  I 
liked  it,  and  I  sha'n't  like  it  unless  I  get  it  the 
way  I  want  it." 

"You  know  you  don't  mean  to  buy  it." 

"I  don't  mean  to  let  anybody  else  buy  it;  you 
can  lay  down  your  life  on  that." 

There  was  so  much  earnestness  in  this  declara- 
tion that  Miss  Follett  laughed  again.  It  was  an 
easy,  silvery  laugh,  pleasant  to  the  ear,  and  not 
out  of  keeping  with  the  medley  of  beautiful 
things  round  her. 

"Jennie's  value  in  a  studio  is  more  than  that 
of  a  model,"  Wray  had  recently  confided  to  his 

10 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

friend,  Bob  Collingham.  "It's  as  if  she  extracted 
the  beauty  from  every  bit  of  tapestry  or  bronze 
and  turned  it  into  animate  life." 

"By  doing  nothing  or  standing  still,"  Col- 
lingham had  added,  "she  can  pin  your  eyes  on 
her  as  other  girls  can't  by  frisking  about.  And 
when  she  moves — " 

An  exclamation  from  Wray  conveyed  the  fact 
that  Jennie's  motion  was  beyond  what  either  of 
these  young  experts  in  womanhood  could  pos- 
sibly put  into  words. 

But  that  Jennie  knew  where  to  draw  a  certain 
kind  of  line  became  evident  when,  either  by 
inadvertence  or  design,  the  back  of  Bob  Colling- 
ham's  hand  rubbed  along  her  cheek.  With  a 
smile  at  once  kindly  and  cold  she  put  away  his 
arm  and  rose.  In  the  few  yards  she  placed  be- 
tween them  before  she  turned  again,  still  with  her 
kind,  cold  smile,  there  was  rebuke  without 
offense. 

Being  fair,  the  young  man  colored  easily. 
When  he  colored,  the  three  inches  of  scar  across 
his  temple  which  he  had  brought  home  from  the 
war  became  a  streak  of  red.  It  was  one  of  the 
reasons  why  Jennie,  who  was  sensitive  to  the 
physical,  didn't  like  to  look  at  him.  Not  to 
look  at  him,  she  pretended  to  arrange  the  folds 
of  her  peplum,  which  kept  her  gaze  downward. 

But  had  she  looked,  she  would  have  seen  that 
he  was  hurt.  His  face  was  of  the  honest,  sym- 
pathetic cast  that  quickly  reflects  the  wounding 
of  the  feelings.  If  men  had  prototypes  in  dogs, 

ii 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Bob  Collingham's  would  have  been  the  mastiff 
or  the  St.  Bernard — big,  strong,  devoted,  slow 
to  wrath,  and  with  an  almost  comic  humiliation 
at  sound  of  a  harsh  word.  Though  there  was  no 
harsh  word  in  Jennie's  case,  Bob  was  sure  he 
detected  a  harsh  thought.  It  hurt  him  the  more 
for  the  reason  that  she  was  a  model,  while  he 
had  advantages  of  social  consideration.  Little 
as  he  would  have  been  discourteous  to  a  girl  of 
his  own  station,  he  would  have  thought  it  un- 
worthy of  a  cad  to  profit  by  Jennie's  helplessness 
in  a  place  like  a  studio. 

"I  hope  you  didn't  think  I  was  trying  to  be 
fresh." 

Now  that  she  felt  herself  secured  by  distance, 
she  laughed  again. 

"I  didn't  think  anything  at  all.  I  just — just 
don't  like  people  touching  me." 

"Not  any  people?" 

"Not  any  I  need  speak  about  to  you." 

"Why  me?" 

"Because  I  hardly  know  you." 

"You  could  know  me  better  if  you  wanted  to." 

"Oh,  I  could  know  lots  of  people  better  if  I 
wanted  to." 

"And  you  don't  want  to — for  what  reason?" 

"It  isn't  always  a  reason.  Sometimes  it's  just 
an  instinct." 

"And  which  is  it  in  my  case?" 

"In  your  case,  it  doesn't  have  to  be  discussed. 
I  shouldn't  know  you,  anyhow.  We're  like 
creatures  in  different — what  do  they  call  it? — 

12 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

not  "  spheres — elements,  isn't  it? — We're  like 
creatures  in  different  elements — a  bird  and  a 
fish — that  don't  get  a  point  of  contact." 

"You  mayn't  see  the  points  of  contact — " 

"And  if  I  don't  see  them  they're  not  there." 
She  turned  toward  Wray,  who  •  was  coming 
back  in  their  direction,  addressing  him  in  the 
idiom  she  heard  among  young  native-born 
Americans,  and  which  accorded  best  with  her 
position  in  the  studio.  "Oh,  Mr.  Wray,  could 
you  let  me  off  posing  any  more  to-day?  This 
friend  guy  of  yours  has  got  me  all  on  springs." 

"Clear  out,  friend  guy.  Can't  you  see  you're 
in  the  way?" 

She  continued  to  take  the  tone  she  was  trying 
to  make  second  nature,  since  it  was  not  first. 

"That's  something  he  wouldn't  notice  if  a 
car  was  running  over  him.  But  please  let  me 
go.  There's  a  quarter  of  an  hour  left  on  to-day, 
but  I'll  make  it  up  some  other  time." 

She  moved  down  the  studio  with  as  much 
seeming  unconcern  as  if  she  didn't  know  that 
two  pairs  of  eyes  were  following  her.  Picking 
her  way  between  old  English  chairs  with  can- 
vases stacked  against  their  legs,  past  dusty 
brocade  hangings,  and  beneath  an  occasional 
plaster  cast  lifted  on  a  pedestal,  she  went  out 
at  the  model's  exit  without  a  glance  behind  her. 

Bob  spoke  only  when  she  had  disappeared. 

"Listen,  Hubert.  I'm  going  to  marry  that 
girl." 

Wray  stepped  back  to  the  front  of  the  easel, 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

flicking  in  a  touch  or  two  on  the  rough  sketch  of 
the  Greek  girl  kneeling  before  Aphrodite. 

"I  was  afraid  you  were  getting  some  such  bug 
in  your  head." 

Bob  limped  to  a  table  on  which  he  had  thrown 
his  hat  and  the  stick  that  helped  his  lameness. 

People  at  Marillo  Park,  where  the  Collinghams 
lived  for  most  of  the  year,  said  that,  with  the 
wounds  he  had  got  while  in  the  French  army  in 
the  early  days  of  the  war,  he  had  brought  back 
with  him  a  real  enhancement  of  manhood. 
Having  come  through  Groton  and  Harvard  little 
better  than  an  uncouth  boy,  his  experience  in 
France  had  shaped  his  outlook  on  life  into  some- 
thing like  a  purpose.  It  was  not  very  clear  as 
yet,  or  sharply  defined;  but  he  knew  that  cer- 
tain preliminary  conditions  must  be  met  before 
he  could  settle  down.  One  of  these  had  to  do 
with  Miss  Jennie  Follett;  and  what  Hubert 
called  "a  bug  in  his  head"  was,  in  his  own  mind, 
at  least,  as  vital  to  his  development  as  his  braving 
his  family  in  going  to  the  war. 

That  had  been  in  the  famous  year  when  the 
American  nation  was  trying  to  be  "neutral  in 
thought."  "I'm  not  neutral  in  thought,"  Bob, 
who  had  only  that  summer  left  Harvard,  had 
declared  to  his  father.  "I'm  not  neutral  in  any 
way.  Give  me  my  ticket  over,  dad,  and  I'll  do 
the  rest  myself." 

He  got  his  ticket  over,  and  fifteen  months 
later,  bandaged  and  crippled,  a  ticket  back. 
On  the  return  voyage  he  had  as  his  companion 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

a  young  American  stretcher-man  who  had  helped 
to  carry  him  off  the  battlefield,  and  who,  a  few 
weeks  later,  nervously  shattered,  had  joined  him 
in  the  hospital.  Wray,  who,  on  the  outbreak  of 
war,  had  been  painting  in  Latoul's  atelier,  had 
now  got  what  he  called  "a  sickener  of  Europe," 
and  was  glad  to  hang  out  his  shingle  in  New  York. 
A  New  England  man  of  Gallicized  ways  of 
thinking,  he  had  means  enough  to  wait  for 
recognition,  so  long  as  he  kept  his  expenses  with- 
in relatively  narrow  bounds. 

With  his  soft  hat  plastered  provisionally  on  the 
back  of  his  head,  Bob  leaned  heavily  on  his  stick. 

"I've  got  to  marry  some  one,"  he  said,  as  if 
in  self-defense.  "I'm  that  kind.  I  can't  begin 
fitting  my  jig  saw  together  till  I  do  it." 

Wray  kept  on  painting. 

"Why  don't  you  pick  out  a  girl  in  your  own 
class  ?  Lots  of  nice  ones  at  Marillo." 

"You  don't  marry  girls  just  because  they're 
nice,  old  thing.  You  take  the  one  who's  the 
other  half  of  yourself." 

"I  don't  see  that  you're  the  other  half  of  Miss 
Follett." 

"Well,  I  am." 

"Miss  Follett  herself  doesn't  think  so." 

''She'll  think  so,  all  right,  when  I  show  her 
that  she  can't  do  without  me." 

"Some  job!"  Wray  grunted,  laconically. 

"Sure  it's  some  job;  but  the  bigger  the  job 
the  more  you're  on  your  mettle.  That's  the 
way  we're  made." 

15 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

The  artist  continued  to  add  small  touches  to 
the  shadows  of  the  Aphrodite  cast  as  he  changed 
his  tactics. 

"If  you  married  Miss  Follett,  wouldn't  your 
family  raise  hell?" 

"They'd  raise  hell  at  first,  and  put  a  can  on  it 
afterward.  Families  always  do." 

"And  what  would  Miss  Follett  feel — before 
they'd  put  on  the  can?" 

Bob  limped  uneasily  toward  the  door. 

"Life  wouldn't  be  all  slip-and-go-down  for 
her,  of  course;  but  that's  what  I  should  have  to 
make  up  to  her." 

"Oh,  you'd  make  it  up  to  her." 

With  his  hand  on  the  knob,  Collingham  turned 
in  mild  indignation. 

"Say,  Hubert,  what  do  you  think  I'm  made  of? 
A  girl  I'm  crazy  about — " 

"Oh,  I  only  wondered  how  you  were  going  to 
do  it." 

"Well,  wonder  away."  A  steely  glint  came 
into  the  deep-set,  small  gray  eyes  as  he  added, 
"That's  something  I  don't  have  to  explain  to  you 
beforehand,  now  do  I?" 

Left  alone,  the  painter  went  on  painting.  As 
it  always  does,  the  house  of  Art  opened  its  door 
to  the  troubles  of  the  artist.  Wray  neither 
turned  his  head  as  his  friend  went  out  nor  mut- 
tered a  farewell.  He  merely  laid  on  his  strokes 
with  an  emotional  vigor  which  hardened  the 
surface  of  the  plaster  cast  into  marble.  Neither 
did  he  turn  his  head  nor  utter  a  greeting  when  he 

16 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

became  aware  that  Jennie,  in  her  sport  suit  of 
tobacco  color  set  off  with  collar  and  cuffs  of  ruby 
red,  was  moving  toward  him  among  the  studio 
properties.  It  was  easier  to  work  his  desire  to 
look  at  her  into  this  swift,  sure  wielding  of  the 
brush. 

In  the  spirit  rather  than  with  the  eyes  he 
knew  that  she  had1  paused  within  ten  or  twelve 
feet  of  him,  that  her  kind,  soft,  bantering  glance 
was  resting  on  him  as  he  worked,  and  that  a 
kind,  soft,  bantering  smile  was  flickering  about 
her  lips.  With  a  deft  force,  he  found  the  colors 
and  gave  this  expression  to  the  mouth  and  eyes 
of  the  kneeling  girl.  It  was  the  work  of  a  second 
— the  merest  twist  of  the  fingers. 

"I  just  wanted  to  say,"  Jennie  explained, 
after  waiting  for  him  to  see  her,  "that  I'm  sorry 
to  have  been  so  horrid  just  now,  and  I'd  like  to 
know  when  I'm  to  come  again." 

"You  could  marry  Bob  Collingham — if  you 
wanted  to." 

His  efforts  had  become  so  passionately  living 
that  he  eouldn't  afford  to  look  up  at  her  now, 
even  had  he  wished  to  do  so.  He  did  not  so  wish, 
because  he  knew,  still  in  the  spirit,  how  she 
would  take  this  announcement — without  the 
change  of  a  muscle,  without  a  change  of  any 
kind  beyond  a  flame  in  the  amber  depths  of  the 
irises.  It  would  be  a  tawny  flame,  with  an  in- 
describable red  in  it,  and  he  managed,  on  the 
instant,  to  translate  it  into  paint.  The  girl  on 
her  knees  was  getting  a  stful  as  the  lumpish  white 

17 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  the  plaster  cast  was  taking  on  the  gleam  of 
ancient,  long-worshiped  stone. 

"And  would  you  advise  me  to  do  that?" 
The  voice  had  the  charm  of  the  well-placed 
mezzo,  the  enunciation  a  melodious  precision. 
Born  in  Halifax,  where  she  had  spent  her  first 
twelve  years,  the  English  tradition  of  musical 
speech,  which  in  that  old  fortified  town  makes 
its  last  tottering  stand  on  the  American  con- 
tinent, had  been  part  of  her  inheritance. 

Still  working  at  his  highest  pitch  of  tensity, 
Wray  considered  his  answer. 

"I  shouldn't  advise  you  to  do  that — if  I 
thought  about  myself." 

"Then  why  say  anything  about  it?" 
"  Because  I  thought  I  ought  to  put  you  wise." 
"What's  the  good  of  that,  when  I  don't  like 
him?" 

"Girls  often  marry  men  they  don't  like  when 
they  have  as  much  money  as  he'll  have." 

"Money's  an  object,  of  course;  but  when  a 
fellow— 

"He's  not  so  bad.  I  like  him.  Most  men 
do." 

"Most  men  wouldn't  have  to  stand  his  pawing 
them  about.  I  like  him,  too — except  for  the 
physical." 

"Then  you  wouldn't  marry  him?" 
"Not  unless  it  was  the  only  way  not  to  starve 
to  death." 

"But  you'll  marry  some  one." 
" Probably;   and,  probably — so  wiiryou." 
18 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

Her  voice  was  as  cool  and  unflurried  as  if  the 
words  were  tossed  off  without  intention. 

Both  knew  that  an  electric  change  had  come 
into  the  mental  atmosphere.  Of  the  two,  the 
girl  was  the  less  perturbed.  Though  beneath  her 
feet  the  floor  seemed  to  heave  like  the  deck  of  a 
ship  in  a  storm,  she  could  stand  in  a  jaunty 
attitude,  her  hands  in  her  ruby-red  pockets,  and 
throw  up  at  its  sauciest  angle  her  dain-ily 
modeled  chin. 

With  him  it  was  different.  He  had  two  main 
points  to  consider.  In  the  first  place,  Bob  Col- 
lingham  had  just  made  an  announcement  to 
which  he,  Wray,  was  obliged  to  give  some 
thought.  He  didn't  need  to  give  much  to  it, 
because  the  conclusions  were  so  obvious.  Jennie 
had  hit  the  poor  fellow  in  the  eye,  and,  instead 
of  viewing  the  case  in  a  common-sense,  Gal- 
licized way,  he  was  taking  it  with  crazy  Ameri- 
can solemnity.  There  was  nothing  to  it.  The 
Collinghams  would  never  stand  for  it.  It  would 
be  a  favor  to  them,  as  well  as  to  Bob  himself,  to 
put  the  whole  thing  out  of  the  question. 

"So  that  settles  that,"  he  said  to  himself. 

Because  as  he  continued  to  reflect  he  worked 
furiously,  Jennie  saw  in  him  the  being  whom  the 
lingo  of  the  hour  had  taught  her  to  call  a  cave- 
man. In  the  motion-picture  theaters  she  gen- 
erally frequented,  cavemen  struggled  with  vam- 
pires in  duels  of  passion  and  strength.  Jennie 
longed  to  be  loved  by  one  of  this  race;  and  a 
caveman  who  came  to  her  with  violet  eyes  and 

19 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

a  sweeping  brown  mustache  possessed  an  appeal 
beyond  the  prehistoric.  In  spite  of  the  challenge 
in  her  smile  and  the  daring  angle  at  which  she 
held  her  chin,  she  waited  in  violent  emotion  for 
what  he  would  say  next. 

"Oh,  I  sha'n't  marry  for  years  to  come/*  he 
jerked  out,  still  going  on  with  his  work.  "  Sha'n't 
be  able  to  afford  it.  If  I  didn't  have  a  few,  a 
very  few,  hundred  dollars  a  year,  I  couldn't  pay 
you  your  miserable  six  a  week." 

She  took  this  manfully.  The  head,  with  its 
ruby-red  toque,  to  which  a  tobacco-colored 
wing  gave  the  dash  which  was  part  of  Jennie's 
personality,  was  perhaps  poised  a  little  more 
audaciously;  but  there  was  no  other  sign  outside 
the  wildness  of  her  heart. 

"Oh,  well;  you're  only  beginning  your  career  as 
yet.  One  of  these  days  you'll  do  a  big  portrait— 

"But,  Jennie,  marriage  isn't  everything." 

It  was  the  caveman's  plea,  the  caveman's  tone; 
and  though  Jennie  knew  she  couldn't  respond  to 
it  in  practice,  the  depths  of  her  being  thrilled. 

"No  it  isn't  everything;  but  for  a  girl  like  me 
it's  so  much  that — " 

"Why  specially  for  a  girl  like  you?" 

"Because  her  ring  and  her  marriage  lines  are 
about  all  she's  got  to  show.  No  woman  can  hold 
a  man  for  more  than — well,  just  so  long;  and 
when  his  heart's  gone  where  is  she,  poor  thing, 
except  for  the  ring  and  the  parson's  name?" 

"A  woman's  heart  is-  as  free  as  a  man's;  and 
when  he  goes  his  way — ' 

20 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"She's  left  standing  in  the  same  old  place. 
We'd  all  be  better  off  if  we  felt  as  free  to  wander 
as  the  men;  but  most  of  us  are  made  so  that  we 
don't  want  to.  God!  what  a  life!"  she  moaned, 
with  a  comic  grimace  to  take  the  pain  from  the 
exclamation.  "But,  tell  me,  Mr.  Wray,  what 
day  do  you  want  me  to  come  again?" 

Jrle  asked,  as  if  casually: 

"Why  do  you  say,  'God!  what  a  life'?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  I  suppose  because  it's 
the  only  thing  to  say.  Wouldn't  you  say  it  if — " 

"If  what?" 

"Oh,  nothing/' 

"Is  it  anything  to  do  with  me?" 

"No — not  specially.  It's  everything — begin- 
ning with  being  born." 

"I  shouldn't  think  you  had  any  kick  against 
being  born — with  a  face  and  a  figure  like  yours." 

"What  good  are  they  to  me?  My  mother 
used  to  be —  Well,  I'm  only  pretty,  and  she 
was  a  great  btauty — but  look  at  her  now." 

"  But  you  don't  have  to  go  the  same  way." 

"All  women  of  our  class  go  the  same  way. 
It's  awful  to  spend  your  whole  life  toiling  and 
aching  and  worrying  and  scraping  and  paring 
just  on  the  hither  side  of  starving  to  death;  and 
yet,  if  it  was  only  yourself,  you  could  stand  it. 
But  when  you  see  that  your  father  and  mother 
did  it  before  you,  and  that  your  children  will 
have  to  do  it  after  you — " 

"Not  in  this  country,  Jennie,"  he  put  in,  senten- 
tiously.  "This  country  gives  everyone  a  chance." 

21 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

She  gave  another  of  her  comic  little  moans. 

"This  country  is  like  every  other  country. 
It's  a  football  field.  If  you're  big  enough  and 
tough  enough,  with  skin  padded  and  conscience 
wadded,  and  legs  to  kick  hard  enough — you  get 
a  chance — yes — and  one  man  in  a  hundred 
thousand  is  able  to  make  use  of  it.  But  if  you're 
just  a  decent,  honest  sort,  willing  to  do  a  decent, 
honest  day's  work,  your  only  chance  will  be  to 
keep  at  it  till  you  drop." 

"Aren't  you  rather  pessimistic?" 

She  ignored  this  question  to  pace  up  and 
down  with  little  tossings  of  the  hands  which 
Wray  found  infinitely  graceful. 

"Look  at  my  father.  He's  worked  like  a  con- 
vict all  his  life,  just  to  reach  the  magnificent 
top-notch  of  forty-five  a  week.  We've  been 
praying  to  God  to  give  him  a  raise — " 

"And  perhaps  God  will." 

She  snapped  her  fingers.  "Like  that  he  will! 
God  has  no  use  for  the  prayers  of  the  decent, 
honest  sort.  He's  on  the  side  of  the  football 
tough  with  the  biggest  kick  in  the  scrimmage — 
Ah,  what's  the  use?  I'm  born,  and  I've  got  to 
make  the  best  of  it.  Tell  me  when  to  come 
again,  and  let  me  go." 

•  Laying  aside  his  brushes  and  palette,  he  went 
close  to  her.  All  the  poetry  in  the  world  seemed 
to  Jennie  to  vibrate  in  his  tones. 

"Making  the  best  of  it  because  you're  born  is 
loving  and  letting  yourself  be  loved,  Jennie." 

"So  it  is."     She  laughed,  with  a  ring  of  the 
22 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

desperate  in  her  mirth.    "You  don't  have  to  tell 
me  that." 

His  voice  sank  to  a  whisper. 

"Then  why  not  do  it?" 

"I  would  like  a  shot  if  I  had  only  myself  to 
think  about." 

"In  love,  there  are  only  two  to  think  about, 
Jennie." 

She  laughed — a  hard  little  laugh,  in  spite  of 
its  silvery  tinkle. 

"When  I  love  I've  got  two  sisters  and  a 
brother,  all  younger  than  myself,  to  bring  into 
the  little  affair,  to  say  nothing  of  a  nice  old  dad 
and  a  mother  that  I'm  very  fond  of.  I've  got  to 
love  for  them  as  well  as  for  myself — " 

"Then  why  don't  you  love  Bob  Collingham?" 

She  threw  him  a  reproachful  look. 

"Don't!  Please  don't!  That's  brutal  of  you! 
But  then,  you  are  brutal,  aren't  you  ?  I  suppose, 
if  you  weren't,  I  shouldn't — " 

A  little  nondescript  gesture  expressed  her 
thought  better  than  she  could  have  put  it  into 
words;  and  with  this  tribute  to  the  caveman  she 
slipped  away  again  amid  the  brocades,  pedestals, 
and  old  furniture. 
3 


CHAPTER  III 

MARILLO  PARK,  N.  Y.,  is  more  than  a 
park;  it  is  a  life.  When  a  social  corre- 
spondent registers  the  fact  that  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Robert  Bradley  Collingham,  Miss  Edith  Colling- 
ham,  and  Mr.  Robert  Bradley  Collingham, 
Junior,  have  arrived  at  Collingham  Lodge, 
Marillo  Park,  from  their  camp  in  the  Adiron- 
dacks,  their  farm  in  Dutchess  County,  or  their 
apartment  in  Fifth  Avenue,  the  implications  are 
beyond  any  that  can  be  set  forth  in  cold  print. 
Cold  print  will  tell  you  that  a  man  has  died, 
but  it  can  convey  no  adequate  notion  of  the 
haven  of  peace  into  which  presumably  he  has 
entered. 

Cold  print  might  describe  Marillo  Park  as  it 
might  describe  Warwick  Castle  or  the  Chateau 
of  Chenonceau,  with  a  catalogue  of  landscapes 
and  architectural  minutiae.  It  could  tell  you  of 
charming  houses  set  in  artfully  laid-out  grounds, 
of  gardens,  shrubberies,  and  tennis  courts,  of 
the  club,  the  swimming  pool,  the  riding  school, 
the  golf  links;  but  only  experience  could  give 
you  that  sense  of  being  beyond  contact  with 
outside  vulgarity  which  is  Marillo's  specialty. 
Against  its  high  stone  wall  outside  vulgarity 
breaks  as  the  sea  against  a  cliff;  before  its  beau- 

24 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

tiful  grille  gate  it  swirls  like  a  river  at  the  foot 
of  a  lawn  with  no  possibility  of  overflow.  As 
nearly  as  may  be  on  earth,  the  resident  of 
Marillo  Park  can  be  barricaded  against  the  sor- 
did, and  withdrawn  from  all  things  inharmonious 
with  his  own  high  thought. 

But  every  Eden  has  its  serpent,  and  at  Col- 
lingham  Lodge  on  that  October  afternoon  this 
Satan  had  taken  the  form  of  a  not  very  good- 
looking  young  man  who  was  pacing  the  flagged 
terrace  side  by  side  with  Miss  Edith  Collingham. 
I  emphasize  the  fact  that  he  was  not  good- 
looking  for  the  reason  that,  in  his  role  of  Satan, 
it  was  an  added  touch  of  the  diabolic.  Tall, 
thin,  and  stormy  eyed,  his  knifelike  features 
were  streaked  with  dark  shadows  which  seemed 
to  fall  in  the  wrong  places  in  his  face.  When  it 
is  further  said  that  he  was  a  young  professor  of 
political  economy  in  a  near-by  university,  with- 
out a  penny  or  much  prospect  in  the  world,  it 
will  easily  be  seen  how  devilish  a  creature  he 
was  to  have  crept  into  such  a  paradise. 

He  had  crept  in  by  means  of  being  occasion- 
ally invited  by  young  Sidebottom,  whose  family 
had  the  next  estate  to  Collingham  Lodge.  Walls 
and  hedges  being  unknown  at  Marillo,  the  lawns 
melted  into  one  another  with  no  other  hint  of 
demarcation  than  could  be  sketched  by  clumps 
of  shrubs  or  skillfully  scattered  trees.  You 
could  be  off  the  Collingham  grounds  and  on  to 
those  of  the  Sidebottoms  without  knowing  you 
had  crossed  a  boundary.  Between  trees  and 

25 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

shrubs  you  could  slip  from  the  one  place  to  the 
other  and  not  be  seen  from  either. 

"She  might  meet  him  a  thousand  times  and 
you  or  I  wouldn't  know  it,"  Mrs.  Collingham 
had  pointed  out  to  her  husband  when  her 
suspicions  were  first  roused.  "All  she's  got  to 
do  is  to  go  round  that  lilac  bush  and  she  might 
do  anything." 

True;  besides  which,  the  mere  chances  of 
that  hospitality  without  which  Marillo  could 
not  be  Marillo  would  throw  together  any  two 
young  people  minded  so  to  come.  In  such 
spacious  freedom,  an  ineligible  young  professor 
could  touch  the  hem  of  the  garment  of  a  banker's 
daughter  without  forcing  the  issue  in  any  way. 

With  the  conversation  between  Miss  Edith 
Collingham  and  Professor  Ernest  Ayling  we  have 
almost  nothing  to  do.  It  is  enough  to  say  that, 
from  the  rapidity  of  the  young  pair's  movements 
and  the  animation  of  their  gestures,  Mrs.  Col- 
lingham judged  that  they  were  very  much  in 
earnest.  Looking  out  from  what  was  known  as 
the  terrace  drawing-room,  she  was  convinced 
that  no  two  young  people  could  talk  like  that 
without  an  understanding  between  them. 

She  had  been  led  to  the  terrace  drawing-room 
by  the  sound  of  voices  and  the  fact  that  it  was 
the  end  of  the  house  toward  the  Sidebottoms' 
premises.  Against  a  background  of  cannas, 
dahlias,  and  gladioli,  with  maples  flinging  their 
flame  and  crimson  up  into  a  golden  sky,  the  two 
figures  passing  and  repassing  the  long  French 

26 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

windows  were  little  more  than  silhouettes.  Such 
scraps  of  their  phrases  as  drifted  her  way  told 
her  that  they  were  up  to  nothing  more  criminal 
than  settling  the  affairs  of  a  distracted  universe, 
but  she  had  no  intention  that  they  should  settle 
anything.  At  the  appropriate  moment  she 
decided  to  make  her  presence  felt. 

In  doing  this  she  was  supported  by  the 
knowledge  that  her  presence  was  a  presence  to 
be  felt  impressively.  Of  her  profile,  it  was  mere 
economy  of  effort  to  say  that  it  was  like  a  cameo, 
aristocratically  regular  and  clear-cut.  Her  hair, 
prematurely  white,  lent  itself  to  the  simplest 
dressing,  too  classic  to  be  a  mode.  A  figure,  of 
which  it  would  have  been  vulgar  to  use  the  word 
"plump,"  carried  the  most  sumptuous  costumes 
with  regal  suitability.  Studied,  polished,  and 
perfected,  she  wore  her  finish  as  a  mask  that  con- 
cealed the  lioness  mother  which  she  was. 

It  was  the  lioness  mother  who  confronted  the 
young  couple  as  they  turned  in  their  promenade. 
Edith  alone  came  forward.  Her  professor  being 
given  a  bow  so  cold  that  it  was  tantamount  to  a 
dismissal,  as  a  dismissal  was  obliged  to  take  it. 
Within  a  minute,  he  was  down  both  the  flowered 
terraces  and  out  of  sight  behind  the  lilac  bush. 

Mrs.  Collingham's  enunciation  had  the  ex- 
quisite precision  of  the  rest  of  her  personality. 

"I  thought  I  asked  you,  dear,  not  to  encourage 
that  impossible  young  man  to  come  here." 

"But  I  can't  stop  his  coming  without  encour- 
agement, can  I,  mother  darling?" 

27 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Mother  darling  moved  to  the  edge  of  the 
flagged  pavement,  looking  down  on  the  blaze  of 
summer's  final  fireworks.  On  each  of  the  two 
lower  terraces  fountains  played,  their  back  drops 
falling  on  the  water  lillies  in  the  basins.  It  being 
the  moment  for  a  strong  appeal,  she  sounded  the 
first  note  without  turning  round. 

"Edith,  I  wonder  if  you  have  the  faintest  idea 
of  a  mother's  ambitions  for  her  children?" 

Instinct  had  taken  her  to  the  root  of  the  whole 
difference  between  the  two  generations  in  the 
family.  Instinct  took  Edith  to  the  same  spot  in 
her  reply. 

"I  think  I  have.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
wonder  if  a  mother  has  the  faintest  idea  of  her 
children's  ambitions  for  themselves.'* 

Following  an  outflanking  movement,  Mrs. 
Collingham  threw  her  line  a  little  farther. 

"It's  curious  how,  as  your  father  and  I  ap- 
proach middle  age,  we  feel  that  vou  and  Bob 
are  going  to  disappoint  us.'* 

"I'm  sure  I  speak  for  Bob  as  well  as  for  myself 
when  I  say  that  we  wouldn't  disappoint  you 
willingly.  It's  only  that  the  things  we  want  are 
so  different.** 

"Ours — your  father's  and  mine — are  simple 
and  natural.'* 

"That's  the  way  Bob's  and  mine  seem  to  us." 

She  was  in  a  tennis  costume  carelessly  worn 
and  not  very  fresh.  A  weatherbeaten  Panama 
pulled  down  to  shade  her  eyes  gave  a  touch  of 
cowboy  picturesqueness  to  an  ensemble  already 

28 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

picturesque  rather  than  pretty  or  beautiful. 
Leaning  nonchalantly  against  the  high,  carved 
back  of  a  teakwood  chair,  the  figure  had  a 
leopard  grace  to  which  the  owner  seemed  in- 
different. Indifference,  boredom,  dissatisfaction 
focused  the  expression  of  the  delicate,  irregular 
features  to  a  wistful  longing  as  far  as  possible 
from  the  mother's  brisk  self-approval.  All  this 
was  emphasized  by  a  pair  of  restless,  intelligent 
eyes,  of  which  one  was  blue  and  the  other  brown. 

The  mother  turned  round  with  an  air  of 
expostulation. 

"I'm  sure  I  can't  see  what  you  want  to  make 
of  your  life.  You  seem  to  have  no  ideals,  not 
any  more  than  Bob.  You're  not  pretty,  but 
you're  not  ugly;  and  you've  a  kind  of  witchiness 
most  pretty  girls  have  to  do  without.  If  you'd 
only  dress  with  some  decency  and  make  the  best 
of  yourself,  you  could  take  as  well  as  any  other 
girl." 

"Yes;   if  the  game  was  worth  the  candle." 

"But  surely  some  game  is  worth  the  candle." 

"Oh,  certainly;  only,  not  this  one,  of  taking — 
in  the  way  you  seem  to  think  girls  want  to  take." 

"Some  girls  do." 

"Oh,  some  girls,  of  course — only,  not — not 
my  kind." 

"But  what  is  your  kind?  That's  what  I 
can't  understand." 

The  girl  smiled — a  dim,  distant,  rather  wistful 
smile  that  merely  fluttered  on  the  lips  and  died 
like  a  feeble  light. 

29 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"And  that's  what  I  can't  explain  to  you, 
mother  darling." 

"Are  we  so  far  apart  as  that?" 

"We're  not  far  apart  at  all.  It's  only  that  I'm 
myself,  while  you  want  me  to  be  a  continuation 
of  you." 

"I  don't  want  anything  but  what  will  make 
for  your  happiness." 

"My  happiness  as  you  see  it  for  me — not  as  I 
see  it  for  myself." 

"But  you're  my  child,  Edith.  I  can't  be  with- 
out hopes  for  you." 

Another  dim,  quickly  dying  smile  was  the 
only  answer  to  this  as  Edith  picked  up  her 
racket  from  the  teakwood  chair  and  moved 
toward  the  house.  On  a  note  that  would  have 
been  plaintive  had  it  not  been  so  restrained,  Mrs. 
Collingham  continued: 

"Edith  darling,  I  don't  think  there's  been  a 
moment  since  you  were  born  when  I  haven't 
dreamed  of  a  brilliant  future  for  you,  and 
now—" 

"But,  oh,  mother  dear,  what's  the  use  of  a 
brilliant  future,  as  you  call  it,  when  your  whole 
soul  is  set  on  something  else?" 

The  lioness  mother  was  roused. 

"But  it  shouldn't  be  set  on  something  else. 
That's  what  I  resent.  Don't  think  for  a  minute 
that  your  father  and  I  mean  to  stand  by  and  see 
you  throw  yourself  away." 

"I  didn't  know  there  was  any  question  of  my 
doing  that." 

30 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"That  boy  will  never  be  anything  better  than 
a  university  professor — never  in  this  world;  and 
if  it  comes  to  our  forbidding  it,  forbid  it  we  shall 
without  hesitation." 

The  girl's  head  was  flung  up.  Boredom  and 
indifference  passed  out  of  the  strange  eyes.  For 
an  instant  the  conflict  of  wills  seemed  about  to 
break  out  into  mutual  challenge.  It  was  Edith 
who  first  regained  enough  mastery  of  self  to  say, 
quietly. 

"You  surely  wouldn't  take  that  responsibility 
— whatever  I  did." 

The  soft  answer  having  warned  the  mother  of 
the  danger  of  collision,  she  subsided  to  an  easier, 
if  a  more  fretful,  tone. 

"And  Bob's  such  a  worry,  too.  If  your  father 
knew  about  this  Follett  girl,  I  think  he  would 
go  wild." 

"But  we  don't  know  anything  ourselves — 
beyond  the  few  hints  dropped  by  Hubert  Wray 
which  I'm  sure  he  didn't  mean." 

"Well,  I'm  worried.  It's  the  war,  I  suppose. 
If  he'd  only  settle  down  to  work — " 

"He  won't  settle  down  till  he  marries;  and, 
if  he  marries,  it  will  have  to  be  some  girl  he's  in 
love  with." 

"If  he  were  to  marry  a  girl  of  that  class — " 

"Girl  of  what  class?    What's  the  good  word?" 

Mrs.  Collingham  turned  on  her  son,  who 
stood  on  the  threshold  of  one  of  the  French 
windows. 

"We're  talking  about  men  and  women  marry- 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ing  outside  of  their  own  class,  Bob,  and  I  was 
trying  to  say  how  fatal  it  was." 

"Good  Lord!  mother,  do  people  still  think 
things  like  that?  I  thought  they'd  rung  the 
bells  on  them  even  at  Marillo.  Wasn't  it  one  of 
the  things  we  fought  for  in  the  war — to  wipe  out 
the  lines  of  caste?'* 

"But  not  to  wipe  out  ideals,  Bob.  What 
fathers  and  mothers  have  worked  to  build  up 
their  sons  fought  to  maintain." 

Max,  the  police-dog  puppy,  who  had  been 
poking  his  nose  between  Bob's  legs,  now  squeezed 
his  vigorous  person  through  the  opening  and 
came  out  on  the  terrace  joyously.  Wagging  his 
powerful  tail  and  sniffing  about  each  of  the 
ladies  in  turn,  he  seemed  to  be  saying:  "Don't 
you  see  that  I'm  here?  Now  cheer  up,  every- 
body, and  let's  have  a  good  time." 

Bob  made  a  feint  at  seconding  this  invitation. 
Going  up  to  his  mother,  he  slipped  an  arm  round 
her  waist  and  kissed  her. 

"Old  lady,  you're  years  behind  the  times. 
What  fathers  and  mothers  built  turned  out  to 
be  a  rotten  old  world  which  they've  handed  to  us 
to  bolster  up.  We're  tackling  the  job  as  well  as 
we  can,  but  you  must  give  us  a  free  hand." 

Releasing  herself  from  his  embrace,  she  stood 
with  an  air  of  authority. 

"If  giving  you  a  free  hand  means  looking  on  at 
the  frustration  of  our  hopes,  you'll  have  to  learn, 
Bob,  that  your  father  and  mother  still  have  some 
of  the  energy  that  placed  you  where  you  are." 

32 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Of  course  you've  placed  us  where  we  are, 
mother  dear,"  Edith  agreed,  pacifically,  "but 
that's  just  the  point.  Because  we  are  where 
you've  placed  us,  we're  crazy  to  go  on  to  some- 
thing else.  Isn't  that  the  way  of  life — the  per- 
petual struggle  for  what  we  haven't  got?  Be- 
cause you  and  father  didn't  have  a  big  house 
and  a  big  position  to  begin  with,  you  worked 
till  you  got  them.  Bob  and  I  were  born  to  them, 
and  so — " 

"It's  this  way,  old  lady,"  Bob  broke  in. 
"All  your  generation  had  bigness  on  the  brain. 
It  was  a  kind  of  disease  like  the  water  that 
swells  a  baby's  head.  They  used  to  think  it  was 
a  specially  American  disease  till  they  found  out 
it  was  English,  French,  German,  and  every  other 
old  thing.  The  whole  lot  of  you  puffed  up  till 
the  earth  hadn't  room  for  you,  and  you  made  the 
war  to  push  one  another  off." 

"I  didn't  make  the  war,  Bob.  I've  never 
been  anything  but  a  poor  mother,  striving  and 
praying  for  her  children." 

"Well,  you  did  push  one  another  off — to  the 
tune  of  ten  or  twelve  millions,  mostly  the  young. 
Since  then,  the  universal  disease  of  swelled  head 
is  being  got  under  control,  as  they  say  of  epi- 
demics. Only  the  left-overs  catch  it  still,  and 
Edith  and  I  aren't  that.  Hardly  anyone  of  our 
age  is.  We  just  don't  take  the  germ.  Not  that 
we  blame  you  and  your  lot,  old  lady — " 

"Thanks,  Bob." 

"Oh,  don't  thank  me.  I'm  just  telling  you." 
33 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"And  the  point  of  your  homily  is — " 

"That  our  generation  all  over  the  world  has 
got  out  of  Marillo  Park.  Marillo  Park  is  a  back 
number.  It's  as  out  of  date  as  the  hat  you  wore 
five  years  ago.  You  couldn't  give  it  away  to  the 
poor,  because  the  poor  don't  wear  that  kind  of 
thing,  and  the  rich  have  gone  on  to  a  new  fashion. 
Listen,  old  lady.  The  thing  I'd  hate  worst  of 
all  for  dad  and  you  is  to  see  you  left  behind, 
trying  to  put  over  the  footlights  a  lot  of  old  gags 
that  the  audience  swallowed  in  its  time,  but 
which  don't  get  a  laugh  any  more.  The  actor 
who  tries  to  do  that  is  pass-ay  forever — " 

"If  you'd  keep  to  English,  Bob,  I  should 
understand  you  a  little  better." 

Bob  grew  excited,  laying  down  the  law  on  the 
palm  of  his  left  hand  with  the  forefinger  of  the 
right,  while  Max,  all  aquiver,  scored  the  points 
with  his  terrific  tail. 

"I'll  not  only  keep  to  English,  but  I'll  tell  you 
the  line  to  take  if  you  want  to  remain  the  up- 
to-date,  bright-as-a-button  old  lady  you  are." 

"I  should  be  grateful." 

"Then  here  goes.  Take  a  long  breath.  Keep 
your  wig  on.  Put  your  feet  in  plaster  casts  so  as 
not  to  kick."  He  summoned  his  forces  to  speak 
strongly.  "If  Edith  was  to  pick  out  a  man  she 
wanted  to  marry — and  I  was  to  pick  out  a  girl 
— no  matter  who — it  would  be  the  chic  new  stuff 
for  father  and  you — " 

But  the  chic  new  stuff  for  father  and  her  was 
not  laid  down  on  the  palm  of  the  hand  for  the 

34 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

reason  that  a  portly  snadow  was  seen  to  move 
within  the  dimness  of  the  drawing-room.  At  the 
same  time,  Max's  joy  was  stifled  by  the  appear- 
ance on  the  terrace  of  Dauphin,  the  Irish  setter, 
who  was  consciously  the  dog  en  litre  of  the 
master  of  the  house.  Mrs.  Collingham  composed 
herself.  Edith  picked  up  a  tennis  ball  from  the 
flags  and  jumped  it  on  her  racket.  Bob  put  a 
cigarette  in  his  mouth  and  struck  a  match.  It 
was  the  unwritten  law  of  the  family  not  to  risk 
intimate  discussion  before  a  tribunal  too  august. 

Once  he  had  reached  the  terrace,  it  was  plain 
that  Collingham  was  tired.  His  shoulders  were 
hunched;  his  walk  had  no  spring  in  it. 

"I'm  all  in,"  he  sighed,  sinking  into  the 
teakwood  chair. 

"Poor  father!" 

Edith  dropped  a  hand  on  his  shoulder.  He 
drew  it  down  to  his  lips  and  kissed  it. 

" You'd  like  your  tea,  wouldn't  you?"  The 
solicitude  was  his  wife's.  "We  were  just  going 
to  have  it.  Bob,  do  find  Gossip  and  tell  him  to 
bring  it  here." 

Bob  limped  into  the  house  and  out  again.  By 
the  time  he  had  returned,  his  father  was  saying: 

"Yes;  it's  been  a  trying  day.  Among  other 
things  I've  had  to  dismiss  old  Follett." 

"The  devil  you  have!" 

The  exclamation  was  so  heartfelt  as  to  turn  all 
eyes  on  the  young  man. 

"Why,  Bob  dear,"  his  mother  asked,  craftily, 
"what  difference  does  it  make  to  you?" 

35 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Bob  did  his  best  to  recapture  a  position  he 
was  not  yet  ready  to  abandon. 

"It  may  not  make  any  difference  to  me,  but 
— but  how  is  he  going  to  live  ? " 

"Is  that  your  responsibility?" 

Edith  came  to  her  brother's  rescue. 

"It's  some  one's  responsibility,  mother." 

"Then  let  some  one  shoulder  it.  Bob  doesn't 
have  to  saddle  himself  with  it,  unless — " 

Convinced  that,  in  the  presence  of  his  father, 
his  mother  wouldn't  speak  too  openly,  Bob  felt 
safe  in  a  challenge. 

"Yes,  mother?    Unless — what?" 

Mother  and  son  exchanged  a  long  look. 

"  Unless  you  go — very  far  out  of  your  way." 

"Well,  suppose  I  did  go — very  far  out  of  my 
way?" 

"  I  should  have  to  leave  it  with  your  father  to 
deal  with  that." 

"Well,  it  wouldn't  be  the  first  time  dad's 
been  philanthropic." 

Collingham  looked  up  wearily.  He  was  sitting 
with  one  leg  thrown  across  the  other,  his  left 
hand  stroking  Dauphin's  silky  head. 

"You  can  be  as  philanthropic  as  you  like  out- 
side business,  Bob,"  he  said,  with  schooled, 
hopeless  conviction.  "Inside,  it's  no  go.  Once 
you  admit  the  principle  of  treating  your  em- 
ployees philanthropically,  business  methods  are 
at  an  end." 

"I  don't  think  modern  economics  would  agree 
with  you,  daddy,"  Edith  objected.  "Aren't  we 

36 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

beginning  to  realize  that  the  well-being  of  em- 
ployees, even  when  they're  no  longer  of-  much 
use—" 

Collingham  looked  up  with  a  kind  of  longing 
in  his  eyes.  3 

"I  wish  I  could  believe  that,  Edie,  but  an 
efficiency  expert  wouldn't  bear  you  out." 

"An  efficiency  expert  doesn't  know  everything. 
He  studies  nothing  but  the  individual  private, 
whereas  a  political  economist  knows  what's 
going  on  all  up  and  down  the  line." 

To  Collingham  this  was  like  the  doctrine  of 
universal  salvation  to  a  Calvinist  theologian. 
He  would  have  seized  it  had  he  dared,  but  for 
daring  it  was  too  late.  "'He  had  trained  himself 
otherwise.  On  a  basis  of  expert  advice  and  in- 
dividual efficiency  Collingham  &  Law's  had  been 
built  up.  All  he  could  do  was  to  grasp  at  the 
personal. 

"Where  did  you  hear  that?" 

"You  can  read  all  about  it  in  Mr.  Ayling's 
last  book,  The  Economic  Value  of  Good  Will." 

As  she  passed  through  the  French  window  into 
the  house,  her  mother  turned  with  a  gesture  of 
both  outspread  hands. 

"There!  You  see!  What  did  I  tell  you ?  She 
has  the  effrontery  to  read  his  books  and  name 
him  openly." 

But  too  dispirited  to  take  up  the  gauntlet, 
Collingham  looked,  with  welcome,  toward  Gos- 
sip, who  appeared  in  the  doorway  with  the  tea. 

37 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  Folletts  came  together  every  evening 
about  six,  chiefly  by  the  process  known  to 
American  cities  as  commuting.  Commuting 
brought  them  to  Number  Eleven  Indiana  Av- 
enue, Pemberton  Heights.  Seen  from  the  New 
York  river-front,  Pemberton  Heights,  on  top 
of  a  great  cliflF  on  the  New  Jersey  side  of  the 
Hudson,  suggests  a  battlemented  parapet.  By 
day,  its  outline  is  a  fringe  against  the  sky;  by 
night,  its  clustering  lights  are  like  a  constellation. 

Indiana  Avenue  is  one  of  those  rare  spots  in 
the  neighborhood  of  New  York  where  a  measure 
of  beauty  is  still  reserved  for  the  relatively  poor. 
The  heights  are  too  high  for  the  railways  to  scale, 
too  inconvenient  for  factories.  The  not-very- 
well-to-do  can  find  shelter  there,  as  the  mediaeval 
peoples  of  the  Mediterranean  coast  found  it  in 
the  rock  towns  where  the  pirates  couldn't  follow 
them.  It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  industry  will 
ever  climb  to  this  uncomfortable  perch,  or  that 
much  competition  will  put  up  rents.  Too  inac- 
cessible for  the  social  rich,  and  too  isolated  for 
the  still  more  social  poor,  Pemberton  Heights  is 
the  refuge  of  those  who  don't  mind  the  trouble 
of  getting  there  for  the  sake  of  the  compensation. 

The  compensation  is  largely  in  the  way  of  air 
38 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

and  panorama.  Both  have  a  tendency  to  take 
away  your  breath.  You  would  hardly  believe 
that  so  much  of  New  York  could  be  visible  all 
at  once.  The  gigantic  profile  of  Manhattan  is 
sketched  in  here  with  a  single  stroke,  while  the 
river  is  thronged  like  a  busy  street  seen  from  the 
top  of  a  tower.  City  smoke  rolls  up  and  ocean 
mist  rolls  in  while  you  are  looking  on.  Sunrise, 
moonrise;  moonset,  sunset;  stars  in  the  heaven 
and  lights  along  the  darkened  waterway,  afford 
to  the  not-very-well-to-do,  cooped  up  all  day  in 
kitchens,  offices,  and  factories,  a  morning  and 
evening  glimpse  into  the  ecstatic. 

Number  Eleven  was  somewhat  withdrawn 
from  all  this  toward  the  middle  of  the  plateau. 
Built  at  a  period  when  an  architect's  ambition 
was  chiefly  to  do  something  singular,  it  had  a 
great  deal  of  sloping  roof,  with  windows  where 
you  would  not  expect  them.  Pemberton  Heights 
being  held  up  bravely  to  rain  and  snow,  the  color 
of  the  house  was  a  weatherbeaten  brown.  Two 
hydrangea  trees,  shaped  like  open  umbrellas, 
and  covered  now  with  white  blossoms  fading  to 
rose,  stood  one  on  each  side  of  the  front  door  in 
the  center  of  two  tiny  grass-plots.  There  was  a 
piazza,  of  course,  where  most  of  the  family  leisure 
was  passed,  and  in  the  yard  behind  the  house 
there  stood  a  cherry  tree.  All  up  and  down  the 
street  for  the  length  of  about  half  a  mile  were 
similar  little  houses,  each  with  its  piazza  and  its 
architectural  oddity,  homes  of  the  not-very- 
well-to-do,  content  with  their  relative  poverty. 
4  39 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Among  themselves  they  formed  a  society  as  dis- 
tinct and  as  active  as  that  of  Marillo  Park,  and 
out  of  it  they  got  as  much  pleasure  as  the  Side- 
bottoms  and  Collinghams  from  their  more 
exclusive  forgatherings. 

In  this  soil,  the  Folletts^  had  taken  root  with  the 
ease  of  transplantation  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
Drawn  to  Pemberton  Heights  by  the  presence 
there  of  other  Canadians,  Josiah  had  bought  the 
little  house  for  seven  thousand  dollars.  On  this 
he  had  paid  four,  raising  the  other  three  on  a 
mortgage  which  it  was  his  ruling  desire  to  pay 
off.  The  mild,  tenacious  optimism  of  his  nature 
convinced  him  he  should  be  able  to  do  this,  in 
spite  of  the  danger  of  being  "fired"  hanging  over 
him  for  two  years.  The  fact  that,  though  the 
months  kept  passing,  that  sword  didn't  fall  in- 
spired the  belief  that  it  never  would.  He  had 
grown  so  sure  of  this  that  with  regard  to  the 
warning  issued  by  Collingham  he  had  never 
taken  his  wife  into  his  confidence.  For  one  thing, 
it  was  useless  to  alarm  her  when  it  might  be 
without  cause,  and  for  another  .  .  . 

But  that  was  the  secret  tragedy  of  Josiah's 
life.  He  had  not  made  good  the  promise  he  gave 
when  Lizzie  Scarborough  married  him,  and  the 
falling  of  the  sword  would  be  the  final  proof  of 
it.  It  would  mean  that  his  whole  patient,  pains- 
taking life  had  fitted  him  for  nothing  better 
than  the  scrap  heap.  That  he  should  come  to 
such  an  end  he  couldn't  believe  possible.  That 
after  nearly  fifty  years  of  uncomplaining  drudg- 

40 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ery  he  should  be  flung  aside  as  useless  to  man  in 
general  and  worse  than  useless  to  his  family 
was  not,  he  argued,  in  keeping  with  the  will  of 
God.  It  was  to  the  will  of  God  he  trusted  more 
than  to  the  mercy  of  Bradley  Collingham, 
though  he  trusted  to  them  both. 

When  he  married  Lizzie  in  the  little  town  of 
Lisgar,  Nova  Scotia,  he  had  been  a  bank  clerk. 
A  bank  clerk  in  Canada  is  a  kind  of  young  noble- 
man at  the  beginning  of  what  may  be  a  striking 
career,  after  the  manner  of  a  fledgling  in  diplo- 
macy. The  banking  institutions  being  few  and 
large,  the  employees  are  moved  from  post  to 
post,  much  like  attaches  or  army  officers.  As 
moves  bring  promotion,  the  clerk  becomes  a 
teller  and  the  teller  a  cashier  and  the  cashier  a 
branch  manager  and  the  branch  manager  a 
wealthy  man  in  touch  with  world-wide  issues. 
It  was  the  kind  of  progress  Josiah  expected  when 
he  married  Lizzie  Scarborough,  the  kind  of  future 
they  dreamed  of  and  talked  about,  and  which 
never  came. 

Josiah  lacked  something.  You  couldn't  put 
your  finger  on  the  flaw  in  his  energy,  but  you 
knew  it  was  there.  He  was  moved  about,  of 
course,  but  with  little  or  no  promotion.  Other 
men  got  that,  but  he  was  ignored.  Harum- 
scarum  young  fellows  whose  ignorance  of  book- 
keeping was  a  scandal  were  lifted  over  his  head, 
while  he  and  Lizzie  stared  at  each  other  in 
perplexity. 

Hardest  of  all  for  him  was  that,  as  years  went 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

by,  Lizzie  herself  lost  belief  in  him.  More 
tender  with  him  for  his  failure,  she  nevertheless 
saw  that  he  was  not  the  man  she  had  supposed 
in  the  gay  young  days  at  Lisgar,  and  he  saw 
that  she  saw.  She  gave  up  the  hope  of  promo- 
tion before  he  did.  The  best  to  which  they  came 
to  aspire  was  a  "raise." 

It  was  bitter  for  Lizzie  because,  as  she  was 
fond  of  saying  to  herself,  and  now  and  then  to 
the  children,  she  had  been  born  a  lady.  This 
was  no  more  than  the  truth.  Whatever  the 
meaning  given  to  the  word,  Lizzie  fulfilled  it, 
though  her  claims  were  more  than  moral  ones. 
The  Scarboroughs  had  been  great  people  in 
Massachusetts  before  the  Revolution.  The  old 
Scarborough  mansion,  still  standing  in  Cam- 
bridge, bears  witness  to  the  generous  scale  on 
which  they  lived.  But  they  left  it  as  it  stood, 
with  its  pictures,  its  silver,  its  furniture,  its 
stores,  rather  than  break  their  tie  with  England. 
Scorned  by  the  country  from  which  they  fled, 
and  ignored  by  that  to  which  they  remained 
true,  their  history  on  Nova-Scotian  soil  was 
chiefly  one  of  descent.  A  few  of  them  prospered; 
a  few  reached  high  positions  in  the  adopted  land, 
but  most  of  them  lacked  opportunity  as  well  as 
the  will  to  create  it.  True,  Lizzie's  father  was  a 
clergyman;  but  her  sisters  married  poorly,  her 
brothers  dropped  into  any  chance  jobs  that  came 
their  way,  while  she  herself  got  only  such  ful- 
fillment of  her  dreams  as  she  found  at  Pemberton 
Heights.  Even  the  move  to  New  York  which 

42 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Josiah  had  made  when  convinced  that  the  Bank 
of  the  Maritime  Provinces  held  no  further  hope 
for  him  had  not  greatly  prospered  them.  Five 
years  of  drifting  between  one  bank  and  another 
were  followed  by  five  steady  years  with  Colling- 
ham  &  Law;  but  even  that  peaceful  time  was 
now  at  an  end. 

While  the  Collinghams  were  drinking  tea  on 
the  flagged  terrace,  and  Jennie  was  on  the  ferry- 
boat, and  Teddy  dressing  and  skylarking  after 
his  plunge  at  the  gym,  and  Follett  nearing  home, 
Lizzie  was  on  her  knees  pinning  up  the  draperies 
she  was  "making  over"  for  Gussie.  Pansy,  the 
daughter  of  a  bulldog  and  a  Boston  terrier, 
whose  pansy-face  had  in  it  a  more  than  human 
yearning,  stood  looking  on,  with  forelegs  wide 
apart. 

Gussie  was  fifteen,  pretty,  pert,  and  impatient. 

"Everyone  '11  see  that  it's  the  old  thing  you've 
been  wearing  since  I  dunno  when." 

Accustomed  to  this  plaint,  Lizzie  thought  it 
useless  to  reply. 

"I'd  rather  not  have  a  rag  to  wear  than  a  thing 
everyone's  sick  of  the  sight  of.  Momma,  why 
can't  I  have  a  new  dress,  right  out  and  out?" 

"My  darling,  you'll  have  a  new  dress  when 
your  father  gets  his  raise.  It  must  come  be- 
fore long;  but  I  can't  possibly  give  it  you  till 
then." 

"I  wish  you'd  stop  talking,"  came  from 
Gladys,  who  was  busy  with  her  lessons  in  a 
corner.  "How  can  I  study  with  all  this  row 

43 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

going   on?     Momma,   what's   the    meaning   of 
'coagulation'?" 

Coagulation  explained,  the  fitting  finished,  and 
a  dispute  adjusted  between  the  two  children, 
Lizzie  began  to  spread  the  table  for  supper, 
Gussie  helping  her.  Most  of  the  downstairs  por- 
tion of  the  house  being  thrown  into  one  large 
living  room,  the  dining  table  stood  at  the  end 
nearest  the  kitchen  and  pantry.  It  was  a  pleasure 
to  watch  the  supple  movements  of  Gussie's 
figure,  and  the  Sittings  of  her  slim-wristed  hands 
as  she  took  the  plates  and  laid  them  in  their 
places.  Most  people  said  she  would  one  day  be 
prettier  than  Jennie,  but  as  yet  that  was  only 
promise. 

Quite  apparent  was  the  fact  that  the  mother 
had  been  more  beautiful  than  any  of  her  daugh- 
ters was  ever  likely  to  become.  At  fifty-odd,  it 
was  a  beauty  that  still  had  youth  in  it.  Worn 
with  the  duties  of  providing  for  a  husband  and 
four  children,  it  retained  a  quality  proud  and 
aloof.  In  her  scouring  and  cooking  and  endless 
domestic  round,  Lizzie  was  like  an  actress 
dressed  and  made  up  for  a  humble  part  rather 
than  really  living  it.  The  Scarborough  tradition, 
which  had  first  refused  to  bend  to  king  against 
people  and  again  to  yield  to  people  against  king, 
had  survived  in  this  woman  fighting  for  her  inner 
life  against  failure,  poverty,  and  sordidness. 

She  was  singing  at  her  work  when  the  front 
door  opened  and  Josiah  came  in.  He  stood  for  a 
minute  in  the  little  entry,  surveying  the  living- 

44 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

room  absently,  while  Pansy  pranced  about  his 
feet.  Gladys  was  still  at  her  lessons,  Gussie 
laying  out  the  knives  and  forks. 

"Where's  your  mother?" 

Gladys  jumped  up  and  ran  to  him.  She  was 
his  youngest,  his  darling,  just  over  twelve.  He 
had  always  hoped  to  do  better  by  her  than  by  the 
older  ones. 

"Hello,  daddy!"  With  her  arms  round  his 
neck,  she  was  pulling  his  face  down  to  hers. 

"Where's  your  mother?"  he  asked  of  Gussie, 
having  advanced  into  the  room. 

Gussie  looked  up  from  her  task  to  inform  him 
that  her  mother  was  in  the  kitchen,  but,  seeing 
his  gray  face  and  shambling  gait,  she  paused 
with  a  fork  in  her  hand. 

"You're  all  right,  daddy,  aren't  you?" 

The  sound  of  voices  having  called  Lizzie  from 
her  work,  she  stood  on  the  threshold  of  the  pan- 
try, drying  her  hands  on  the  corner  of  her  apron. 
Before  he  said  a  word  she  knew  that  the  calamity 
which  forever  threatens  those  dependent  on  a 
weekly  wage  had  fallen  on  the  family. 

"Lizzie,  I'm  fired." 

She  had  never  had  to  take  a  blow  like  this,  not 
even  when  the  three  who  came  before  Jennie 
had  died  in  babyhood.  This  was  the  worst  and 
hardest  thing  her  imagination  could  conjure  up, 
because  it  meant  not  only  the  sweeping  away  of 
their  meager  income,  but  her  husband's  defeat  as 
a  man. 

Going  to  him,  she  laid  her  hands  on  his  shoul- 
45 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ders  and  tried  to  look  into  the  eyes  that  avoided 
hers  in  shame. 

"We'll  meet  it,  Jo,"  she  said,  quietly.  "We've 
been  through  other  things.  I've  saved  a  little 
money  ahead — nearly  a  hundred  dollars.  Don't 
feel  badly.  I'm  glad  you're  out  of  Collingham 
&  Law's,  where  you've  said  yourself  that  your 
desk  was  in  a  draught.  You'll  get  another  job, 
with  bigger  pay,  and  perhaps" — she  sprang  to  the 
great  glorious  hope  she  was  always  cherishing — 
"and  perhaps  Teddy  will  earn  more  money  and 
be  a  great  success." 

"Hel-\o,  ma!" 

Teddy  himself  was  swinging  down  the  room, 
Pansy  capering  round  him  with  her  silvery  bark. 
Having  tossed  his  cap  on  the  sofa,  he  caught  his 
mother  in  a  bearish  hug.  Fresh  from  his  bath, 
gleaming,  ruddy,  clear-eyed,  stocky  rather  than 
short,  he  was  a  Herculean  cub,  the  makings  of 
a  man,  but  as  yet  with  no  soul  beyond  play.  No 
one  had  ever  seen  him  serious.  It  was  a  draw- 
back to  him  at  Collingham  &  Law's,  where  he 
skylarked  his  way  through  everything.  "You 
must  knock  the  song-and-dance  out  of  that 
young  blood,"  was  Mr.  Bickley's  report  on  him, 
"or  he'll  never  earn  his  pay." 

Before  his  mother  could  say  anything  he  was 
tickling  her  under  the  chin  with  little  "elks!" 
of  the  tongue,  Pansy  assisting  by  springing  half- 
way to  his  shoulder.  The  sport  ended,  he  held 
her  out  at  his  strong  arm's  length,  laughing  down 
into  her  eyes. 

46 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Good  old  ma! — the  best  ever!  What  have 
you  got  for  supper?" 

She  told  him,  as  nearly  as  possible  as  if  nothing 
else  was  on  her  mind.  Then  she  added: 

"You've  got  to  know,  Teddy  darling.  They've 
discharged  your  father  from  Collingham  & 
Law's." 

Confusedly,  Teddy  Follett  knew  he  had  re- 
ceived a  summons,  the  call  to  be  a  man.  Hither- 
to he  had  been  a  boy;  he  had  thought  himself  a 
boy;  he  had  called  himself  a  boy.  Even  in  the 
navy  he  had  been  with  boys  who  were  treated 
as  boys.  The  pang  of  agony  he  felt  now  was 
that  he  was  a  boy  still — with  a  man's  part  to 
play. 

He  did  his  best  to  play  it  on  the  instant. 

"Oh,  is  he?  Then  that's  all  right.  I'll  be 
making  more  money  soon  and  be  able  to  swing 
the  whole  thing." 

Gussie  was  here  the  discordant  element. 

"You've  got  to  make  it  pretty  quick,  then, 
and  be  smarter  than  you've  ever  been  before." 

He  turned  away  from  the  group  in  which  his 
mother  watched  him  with  adoring  eyes  while 
his  father  stood  with  gaze  cast  down  like  a 
criminal. 

"I'm  sorry  to  put  the  burden  on  you  at  your 
age,  my  boy,"  he  said,  brokenly,  "but  perhaps  I 
may  get  another  job,  after  all,  and  one  that  '11 
pay  better." 

Teddy  didn't  hear  this,  not  that  he  was  so  far 
away,  but  because  he  was  listening  to  that  call 

47 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

which  seemed  so  impossible  to  respond  to.  He 
would  have  to  be  a  man;  he  would  have  to  earn 
big  money,  and  at  present  he  didn't  see  how. 
Fifty  bucks  a  week,  he  was  saying  to  himself,  was 
hardly  enough  to  run  the  family,  and  he  had 
only  eighteen! 

He  was  standing  with  his  back  to  them  all, 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  when  the  front  door 
opened  again.  Jennie  came  in  all  aglow  and 
abloom  after  her  walk  from  the  street  cars. 

"Well,  what's  the  pose?"  she  asked,  briskly,  of 
Teddy,  beginning  to  take  off  her  jacket.  "You 
ought  to  be  model  to  a  sculptor." 

"Jen,"  he  whispered,  hoarsely,  before  she 
could  join  the  others,  "pa's  fired." 

To  take  this  information  in,  Jennie  paused 
with  her  arms  still  outstretched  in  the  act  of 
taking  off  her  jacket. 

"  Do  you  mean  they  don't  want  him  any  more 
at  Collingham  &  Law's?" 

"That's  the  right  number." 

"But — but  what  are  we  going  to  do?" 

"That's  for  you  and  me  to  say.  It's  up  to  us, 
Jen.  Pa'll  never  get  another  job,  not  on  your 
life,  unless  it's  running  a  lift.  We've  got  to 
shoulder  it — you  and  me  between  us." 

Jennie  passed  on  into  the  room  and  down  to 
the  group  round  the  table.  The  glow  had  gone 
out  of  her  cheeks,  but  she  was  free  from  her 
brother's  dismay.  To  begin  with,  she  was  a 
woman,  and  he  was  only  a  man.  All  his  adven- 
tures would  have  to  be  dull  ones  in  the  line  of 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

work  whereas  hers  .  .  .  She  could  hear  Wray 
saying,  as  he  had  said  only  two  hours  ago, 
"You  could  marry  Bob  Collingham  if  you 
wanted  to." 

She  didn't  want  to — as  far  as  that  went;  but 
if  the  worst  were  to  come  to  the  worst  and  they 
should  be  in  need  of  bread  .  .  . 

"Hello,  mother!  Hello,  daddy!"  Jennie  was 
quite  self-possessed.  "Teddy's  been  telling  me. 
Too  bad,  isn't  't?  But  something  will  turn  up. 
What  is  there  for  supper,  Gus?" 

Gussie  minced  round  the  table,  putting  on  the 
salt  cellars. 

"There's  pickled  humming  birds  for  prin- 
cesses," she  said,  witheringly.  "After  that 
there'll  be  honey-dew  jam." 

"Then  I'll  go  up  and  take  my  hat  off." 

This  coolness  had  the  inspiriting  effect  of  an 
officer's  calm  on  a  sinking  ship.  It  was  an  indi- 
cation that  life  could  go  on  as  usual;  and  if 
life  could  go  on  as  usual,  all  wasn't  lost. 

"And  for  mercy's  sake,"  Jennie  added,  turning 
to  leave  them,  "don't  everybody  look  so  glum. 
Why,  if  you  knew  what  I  could  tell  you  you'd 
all  be  ordering  champagne." 

So  they  were  tided  over  the  dreadful  minute, 
which  meant  that  they  found  power  to  go  on 
with  the  preparations  for  supper  and  to  sit  down 
to  supper  itself.  There  the  old  man  cheered  up 
sufficiently  to  be  able  to  tell  what  had  passed 
between  him  and  the  head  of  the  firm.  He  was 
still  doing  this  when  Teddy  sprang  to  his  feet, 

49 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

striking  the  table  with  a  blow  that  made  the 
dishes  jump. 

"God  damn  Bradley  Collingham !"  he  cried, 
with  his  mouth  full.  "I'll  do  something  to  get 
even  with  him  yet — if  I  have  to  go  to  the  chair 
for  it." 

"Sit  down,  you  great  gump — talking  like 
that!"  Gussie  pulled  her  brother  by  the  coat 
till  he  sank  back  into  his  seat.  "Momma,  you 
should  send  him  away  from  the  table." 

"That's  a  very  wicked  thing  to  say,  my  boy — " 
Josiah  was  beginning. 

"Let  him  talk  as  he  likes,"  the  mother  broke 
in,  calmly.  "Going  to  the  chair  can't  be  so 
terrible — if  you  have  a  reason." 

She  went  on  carving  as  if  she  had  said  nothing 
strange. 

"Well,  ma,  I  call  that  the  limit,"  Jennie 
commented. 

"Oh  no,  it  isn't,"  the  mother  returned,  with 
the  new  strength  which  seemed  to  have  come  to 
her  within  half  an  hour.  "I'm  ready  to  say  a 
good  deal  more." 

She  looked  adoringly  toward  Teddy,  who  after 
his  outburst  had  returned  sheepishly  to  his 
plate,  while  Pansy  stood  apart  from  them  all, 
wise,  yearning,  and  yet  implacable,  a  little 
doggy  Fate. 


CHAPTER  V 

NO  difference  of  standard  in  the  Collingham 
household  was  so  obvious  as  that  between 
Dauphin,  the  Irish  setter,  and  Max,  the  police 
dog.  The  situation  was  specially  hard  on 
Dauphin.  To  have  owned  Collingham  Lodge 
and  its  occupants  during  all  his  conscious  life, 
and  then  one  day  to  find  himself  obliged  to  share 
this  dominion  with  a  stranger  had  given  him  in 
his  declining  years  a  pessimistic  point  of  view. 
It  had  made  him  proud,  cold,  withdrawn,  like  a 
crusty  old  aristocrat  forced  in  among  base  com- 
pany. To  the  best  of  his  ability  he  ignored  the 
police  dog,  though  it  was  difficult  not  to  be 
aware  of  the  presence  of  a  being  too  exuberant  to 
appreciate  disdain. 

For  Dauphin,  the  most  beastly  experience  of 
the  day  began  about  four  each  afternoon,  at  the 
minute  when  the  dog-clock  told  him  that  his 
master  might  be  expected  home.  That  was  the 
hour  at  which  from  time  immemorial  he  had 
taken  possession  of  the  great  front  portico  where 
the  distant  burr  of  the  motor-car  first  reached 
him.  When  the  burr  became  a  throb  he  knew  it 
was  passing  the  oak  that  marked  the  Collingham 
boundary;  and,  since  it  had  arrived  on  his  own 
ground,  he  could  run  down  the  driveway  to  meet 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

it.  This  had  been  his  exclusive  right.  To  be 
joined  daily  now  by  a  frisky,  irrepressible  pup 
made  him  feel  like  an  old  man  tied  to  an  insup- 
portable young  wife  from  whom  his  own  death 
will  be  the  sole  deliverance.  Life  to  Dauphin 
had  thus  become  a  mingling  of  impatience  and 
anguish,  poorly  masked  beneath  an  air  of  dignity. 

And  as  far  as  he  could  judge,  his  master's  wife, 
of  whom  he  had  no  great  opinion,  had  begun  to 
share  these  emotions.  Anguish  and  impatience 
had  become  of  late  the  chief  elements  in  the 
aura  she  threw  out,  and  by  which  dogs  take  their 
sense  of  men.  It  was  not  that  her  words  or 
expressions  betrayed  her.  It  was  only  that  when 
she  came  within  his  sphere  of  perception  he  was 
aware  that  she  felt  the  kind  of  passion  the  police 
dog  roused  in  himself. 

He  was  aware  of  it  on  this  May  afternoon, 
more  than  six  months  after  she  had  first  learned 
of  Bob's  infatuation  for  the  Follett  girl,  when 
she  came  out  on  the  portico  to  listen  for  the 
expected  car.  She  would  come  out,  listen,  and 
go  in.  Each  time  she  came  out,  each  time  she 
listened,  each  time  she  retired,  he  felt  the  sweep- 
ing to  and  fro  of  an  imperious  will  worried  or 
frustrated,  though  he  sat  on  his  haunches  and 
gave  no  sign.  He  couldn't  give  a  sign,  because 
Max  would  misunderstand  it.  There  he  was, 
down  on  the  lawn  before  the  portico,  grinning, 
prancing,  joking,  calling  names — names  quite 
audible  in  dog  intercourse,  though  a  human  being 
couldn't  catch  them — and  the  least  little  move- 

52 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ment  Dauphin  made  would  be  taken  as  conces- 
sion. The  old  setter  was  sorry.  He  would  have 
liked  showing  his  master's  wife — he  didn't  con- 
sider her  his  mistress — that  he  understood  her 
distress;  but  he  was  nailed  to  the  doorstep  by 
force  majeure. 

And  the  woman  envied  him.  He  was  perfectly 
aware  of  that.  She  assumed  that  dogs  had  no 
social  problems.  All  he  had  to  do,  she  thought, 
was  to  sit  and  blink  at  the  magnolias,  hawthorns, 
and  lilacs  pursuing  one  another  into  bloom.  All 
he  had  to  think  of  was  the  up  hill  and  down  dale 
of  the  view  before  him,  a  haze  of  blue  and  green 
and  rose  melting  to  the  mauve  of  hills. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  was  something  like 
what  was  passing  through  her  mind.  A  master- 
ful woman,  she  was  nevertheless  reaching  that 
point  of  self-pity  where  she  envied  the  untroubled 
dogs.  While  she  carried  the  cares  of  so  many 
others,  no  one  else  carried  hers.  All  through  the 
winter  she  had  had  Edith  and  Bob  on  her  mind, 
and  now  she  had  Bradley.  On  leaving  for  the 
bank  that  morning,  he  had  been  so  terribly  up- 
set that  she  couldn't  rest  till  knowing  how  he 
had  got  through  his  day.  She  was  the  more 
worried  because  of  being  entirely  alone  and  thus 
thrown  in  on  herself. 

Edith  had  gone  to  stay  with  people  in  the 
Berkshires.  Of  that  her  mother  was  glad.  She 
meant  for  the  present  to  keep  her  there.  With 
her  queer  ideas,  she  would  only  make  her  brother 
the  more  difficult  to  deal  with,  though  she  had 

53 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

not  been  difficult  herself.  Nearly  seven  months 
had  passed,  and  yet  her  affair  with  Ayling  was 
exactly  where  it  had  been  in  the  previous  October. 
That  was  the  advantage  of  a  girl;  you  could 
always  tell  where  she  stood.  Edith  was  tena- 
cious, but  not  defiant.  Though  capable  of 
engaging  herself  to  this  young  man,  she  would 
hardly  marry  him  in  face  of  her  father's  op- 
position. 

Bob,  on  the  other  hand,  was  not  only  head- 
strong, but  unreasonable.  He  would  marry  the 
Follett  girl  if  she  would  marry  him,  whatever 
migrit  be  the  consequences.  She,  his  mother, 
had  it  "out"  with  him,  and  he  had  said  so.  It 
was  a  terrible  thing  to  have  their  whole  domestic 
happiness  hang  on  the  whim  of  a  creature  like 
the  Follett  girl;  but  apparently  it  did. 

She  had  not  spoken  to  Bob  till  Hubert  Wray 
had  surrendered  all  he  had  to  tell.  He  had  done 
this  through  a  process  of  "pumping"  of  which 
he  himself  had  hardly  been  aware.  Having 
ascertained  that  his  New  England  connections 
were  unexceptional,  Junia  had  been  attentive 
to  him  through  the  winter,  making  him  feel 
that  Collingham  Lodge  was  a  second  home. 
What  he  didn't  tell  to  her  he  told  to  Edith,  and 
what  Edith  knew  the  mother  had  no  great  diffi- 
culty in  finding  out.  Thus  when,  on  the  previous 
Saturday,  Bob  was  about  to  leave  for  a  party  on 
Long  Island,  they  had  had  the  plain  talk  which 
could  no  longer  be  deferred. 

They  had  had  it  after  lunch,  seated  on  a  bench 
54 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

overlooking  the  tennis  court.  They  had  come  out 
ostensibly  to  talk  over  the  sacrifice  of  the  pink- 
and-white  hawthorn  in  the  shade  of  which  they 
sat  in  favor  of  extending  the  court  so  that  Bob 
and  Edith  could  both  have  parties  simultane- 
ously. While  the  new  court  would  be  an  im- 
provement, they  would  regret  the  celestial 
flowering  of  the  hawthorn  whenever,  as  at 
present,  it  was  May. 

"  Not  that  it  would  make  so  very  much  differ- 
ence to  your  father  and  me,"  Junia  began,  in  a 
quavering  tone,  "if  things  we're  afraid  of  were 
to  happen." 

So  the  subject  was  opened  up.  Bob  could 
only  ask,  "What  things?"  and  his  mother  could 
only  tell  him. 

"It's  quite  true,  old  lady,"  he  confessed. 
"You  might  as  well  know  it  first  as  last." 

Junia  had  not  brought  up  her  children  without 
having  learned  that,  while  Edith  could  be  con- 
trolled, Bob  could  only  be  managed.  With  Edith, 
she  could  say,  "I  forbid,"  with  Bob,  it  had  to 
be,  "I  suffer." 

"Of  course,  dear,"  she  said  now,  "I'm  your 
mother,  and  whatever  you  do  I  shall  try  to 
accept.  It  will  be  hard,  naturally — it's  hard 
already — but  you  can  count  on  me." 

He  took  her  hand  and  squeezed  it. 

"Thanks,  old  lady." 

"Of  course  I  can't   answer  for  your  father. 
You  know  for  yourself  how  stern  and  unyielding 
he  is." 
5  55 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Oh,  I'm  not  so  sure  about  that.  It's  always 
seemed  to  me  that  he'd  give  in  to  a  lot  of  things, 
if  you'd  only  let  him." 

This  perspicacity  being  dangerous,  she  glided 
to  another  aspect  of  her  theme. 

"What  I  don't  understand  is  why,  if  you've 
been  in  love  with  her  for  seven  or  eight  months, 
and  you  mean  to  marry  her,  you  haven't  done  it 
already." 

He  took  two  or  three  puffs  at  his  cigarette 
before  tossing  off: 

"I'd  do  it  like  a  shot,  if  she  would." 

"And  she  won't?" 

"Not  yet." 

"And  you  think  she  will?" 

"I'm  sure  she  will." 

"What  makes  you  so  certain?" 

"Nothing.     I  just  know." 

Having  had  her  fears  verified,  Junia  had  no 
object  in  pushing  the  inquiry  further.  Her  duty 
in  life  was  to  take  events  as  they  touched  her 
family  and  mold  them  for  the  best.  When  she 
called  it  "the  best"  she  meant  it  as  the  best. 
She  was  not  a  worldly  woman  with  mere  fashion- 
able ends  in  view.  Eager  for  the  good  of  her 
children,  she  was  conscientious  in  pursuit  of  the 
things  she  truly  believed  to  be  worthiest. 

All  through  Sunday  she  took  counsel  with 
herself,  going  to  communion  at  the  restful  little 
Marillo  church,  and  putting  new  intensity  into 
her  devotion.  She  had  guests  at  lunch  and 
went  out  to  dinner,  and,  though  equal  to  all  the 

56 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

social  demands,  her  mind  did  not  relinquish  the 
purpose  she  had  in  view.  Could  she  have  accom- 
plished it  without  her  husband's  aid,  she  would 
probably  not  have  taken  him  into  her  confidence. 
It  being  her  special  task  to  deal  with  the  chil- 
dren, the  less  he  knew  of  their  mistakes  and 
escapades  the  simpler  it  was  for  them  all. 

It  may  be  an  illuminating  digression  here  to 
say  that  there  had  been  a  time,  some  fifteen 
years  earlier,  when  Junia  had  had  an  experience 
as  difficult  as  the  one  she  was  facing  now.  Noth- 
ing but  a  trained  subconsciousness  had  carried 
her  through  that,  and  she  looked  for  the  same 
mainstay  of  the  self  to  come  to  her  aid  again. 
One  of  the  lessons  she  had  learned  at  that  time 
was  the  value  of  quietude,  of  reserve  in  "giving 
herself  away."  She  was  not  one  to  whom  this 
restraint  came  natural;  but  for  the  very  reason 
that  it  was  acquired,  it  had  the  intenser  force. 

It  was  at  a  time  when  they  had  lived  in  the 
Marillo  house  only  a  little  while,  and  the  Bradley 
of  that  day  was  not  the  portly,  domesticated 
bigwig  of  the  present.  He  was  a  tempestuous 
sea  of  passions  right  at  the  dangerous  flood-tide, 
the  middle  forties.  The  first  ardor  of  married 
life  was  at  an  end  for  both  of  them;  but  while, 
for  her,  existence  was  running  more  and  more 
into  one  quiet  purposeful  stream,  for  him  it  was 
raging  off  in  new  directions. 

Whatever  Junia  suspected  she  was  too  wise  to 
know  it  as  a  certainty.  Knowing,  she  argued, 
would  probably  weaken  her  and  do  nothing  to 

57 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

strengthen  him.  Already  she  was  more  intensely 
a  mother  than  she  was  a  wife,  living  in  the  amaz- 
ing careers  she  was  planning  for  her  children. 
Edith  would  marry  an  English  peer,  while  Bob 
would  take  a  brilliant  place  in  his  own  country. 
Their  victories  would  be  her  victories,  till,  in 
some  far-distant,  beatified  old  age,  she  would  be 
translated  to  the  stars. 

And  then  one  afternoon,  when  the  flagged 
pavement  had  only  recently  been  laid  and  they 
were  drinking  tea  on  it,  Bradley  had  said,  right 
out  of  a  clear  sky: 

"  Junia  I  don't  know  whether  you've  suspected 
it  or  not,  but  for  some  time  past  I've  had  a 
mistress." 

That  was  the  instant  when  she  first  learned 
the  value  of  a  schooled  subconsciousness.  It 
seemed  to  her  that  she  had  been  slain;  and  yet, 
with  a  nerve  little  less  than  miraculous,  she  went 
on  with  her  tasks  among  the  tea  things. 

"If  you've  done  it  so  far  without  telling  me, 
Bradley,"  she  said,  at  last,  with  only  the  slightest 
tremor  in  her  tone,  "why  shouldn't  you  let  me 
remain  ignorant?" 

"Does  that  mean  that  you  don't  care  if  I  go 
on?" 

"I  think  you  can  answer  that  as  well  as  I. 
What  I  don't  care  for  is  to  be  drawn  into  an 
affair  from  which  your  own  good  taste — merely 
to  put  it  on  that  ground — should  be  anxious  to 
leave  me  out." 

He  looked  at  her  savagely. 
58 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Don't  you  resent  it  any  more  than  that?" 

"Is  that  why  you're  giving  me  the  information 
— to  see  how  much  I  resent  it?" 

"Partly." 

"Then  I'm  afraid  you  will  have  your  labor  for 
your  pains.  You'll  never  see  more  than  you're 
seeing  at  this  instant." 

That  stand  was  a  master  stroke.  It  gave  her 
the  advantage  of  being  enigmatic.  It  enabled 
her  to  take  blows  without  seeming  to  have  felt 
them,  and  to  deliver  them  without  betraying  the 
quarter  from  which  the  next  would  come. 

Right  there  and  then  Bradley  had  been 
monstrous  enough  to  suggest  that,  since  she 
liked  Collingham  Lodge,  she  should  remain  there 
and  let  him  go  away.  He  would  make  generous 
provision  for  her  and  the  children,  and  in  return 
expect  his  divorce. 

But  she  had  taken  her  stand — the  enigmatic. 
She  didn't  argue;  she  didn't  plead;  she  didn't 
reproach  him;  she  didn't  treat  him  to  the  scene 
through  which  weaker  women  would  have  put 
him. 

"Bradley,  I  shall  expect  you  to  remain  with 
me,"  were  the  only  words  she  used. 

And  he  had  remained.  Less  than  two  years 
later,  it  was  she  who  fixed  the  sum  the  other 
woman  was  to  be  paid  in  order  to  get  rid  of  her. 
She  was  sufficiently  in  sympathy  with  her  sex 
to  insist  on  the  terms  being  liberal.  "I  think  she 
should  have  fifty  thousand  dollars,"  she  declared, 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars  the  woman  received. 

59 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

So  that,  if  Bradley  had  lost  the  first  passion 
of  his  love  for  her,  he  had  gained  vastly  in  re- 
spect. Hot-tempered,  high-handed,  impetuous, 
imperious,  as  he  knew  her  to  be,  he  saw  her 
curb  and  compress  these  qualities  till  they  be- 
came a  prodigious  motor  force.  If  she  had  not 
mastered  herself,  she  had  mastered  the  expres- 
sion of  herself  till  she  was  an  instrument  at  her 
own  command. 

It  was  as  an  instrument  at  her  own  command 
that,  on  the  Wednesday  morning,  before  he  went 
to  town,  she  gave  her  husband  as  much  infor- 
mation as  she  thought  he  ought  to  possess  about 
his  son. 

"Would  you  mind  sitting  down  for  a  minute, 
Bradley?  I've  something  important  to  say." 

He  had  come  up  to  her  room,  as  she  took  her 
breakfast  in  bed,  after  he  had  had  his  own  down- 
stairs. Wearing  a  lace  dressing  jacket  and  a 
boudoir  cap,  she  was  propped  up  with  pillows, 
a  wicker  tray  with  legs  on  the  coverlet  before  her. 
In  the  canopied  Louis  Quinze  bed  of  old  rich- 
grained  walnut,  raised  six  inches  above  the  floor, 
she  suggested  an  eighteenth-century  French 
princess,  Madame  Sophie  or  Madame  Victoire, 
receiving  a  courtier  at  her  levee. 

Luxurious  with  a  note  of  chastity  was  the  rest 
of  the  chintzy  room.  The  pictures  on  the  walls 
were  sacred  ones,  copies  of  old  Italian  masters. 
A  prie-dieu  in  a  corner  supported  a  bible  and  a 
prayer-book  in  tooled  bindings  with  a  coat  of 
arms.  The  white-paneled  wardrobe  room  seen 

60 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

through  a  door  ajar  was  as  austere  as  a  well- 
kept  sacristy.  Perfumed  air  came  in  through  the 
open  windows,  and  thrushes  were  fluting  in  the 
trees. 

Reminding  her  that  Tims,  the  chauffeur,  would 
soon  be  at  the  door  to  take  him  to  the  bank,  Col- 
lingham  sank  into  the  armchair  nearest  to  the 
bed.  His  thoughts  were  on  the  amount  in  the 
proposed  issue  of  Paraguayan  bonds  the  house 
would  be  able  to  carry. 

"It's  about  Bob,"  she  began,  in  a  tone  little 
more  than  casual.  "Did  you  know  he  was  in  a 
scrape?" 

He  started,  firing  off  his  brief  questions  rapidly : 

"Who?  Bob?  What  kind  of  scrape?  With  a 
girl?" 

"Exactly.  With  a  girl  who  may  give  us  a 
good  deal  of  trouble  unless  the  thing  is  stopped." 

If  Collingham's  heart  sank  it  was  not  wholly 
because  of  the  scrape  with  the  girl,  but  because 
he  was  afraid  of  chickens  coming  home  to  roost. 
Though  he  had  never  broached  the  subject  with 
the  boy,  he  had  often  wondered  as  to  how  he 
met  sexual  temptation;  and  now  he  was  to  learn. 

"Is  it  anything  very  wrong?" 

"Only  in  intention."  She  sipped  her  coffee 
before  letting  him  have  the  full  force  of  it.  "  He 
wants  to  marry  her." 

He  felt  some  slight  relief. 

"Oh,  then  it's  not—" 

"No;  not  as  far  as  he's  concerned.  As  to  her 
— well  I  presume  that  she's  the  usual  type." 

61 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Did  he  tell  you  himself?" 

"He  told  me  himself." 

"His  job  at  the  bank  pays  him  only  two  thou- 
sand dollars  a  year.  Did  he  say  what  else  he 
expected  to  marry  on?" 

"We  didn't  discuss  that;  but  I  suppose  it 
would  be  what  he  expects  you  to  give  him." 

"And  if  I  don't  give  him  anything?" 

"That's  what  I  wanted  to  know.  If  you 
didn't—" 

"He'd  call  it  off?" 

"No;  perhaps  not.     But  she  would." 

"Have  you  any  special  reason  for  thinking 
so?" 

"None  but  my  knowledge  of — of  that  kind  of 
woman  in  general."  She  went  on  as  quietly  as 
if  the  incident  of  fifteen  years  previously  had 
never  occurred.  "Men  are  so  guileless  about 
women  who  have — who  have  love  to  sell.  They're 
such  simpletons.  They  so  easily  think  these 
women  like  them  for  themselves  when  all  the 
while  they're  only  gauging  the  measure  of  the 
pocketbook." 

Collingham  endeavored  not  to  hang  his  head, 
but  it  seemed  to  go  down  in  spite  of  him  as  the 
placid  voice  sketched  his  program  for  the  day. 

Junia  had  heard  her  husband  say  that  Mr. 
Huntley,  his  second  in  command,  was  to  go  to 
South  America  in  connection  with  the  issue 
of  Paraguayan  bonds.  Why  shouldn't  Bob  be 
sent  with  him?  It  would  add  to  his  experience 
and  make  him  feel  important.  After  he  had 

62 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

left  Asuncion,  reasons  could  be  found  for  keeping 
him  at  Lima,  Rio,  or  Buenos  Aires  till  the  whole 
thing  blew  over.  Having  accepted  the  sugges- 
tion gratefully,  Collingham  came  to  the  question 
he  had  up  to  now  repressed. 

"Who's  the  girl?    I  suppose  you  know." 

"She's  been  posing  for  Hubert  Wray.  Bob 
met  her  at  the  studio.  Her  name  is — " 

Grasping  the  arms  of  the  chair,  he  strained 
forward. 

"Not— not  Follett's  girl?" 

"Yes;  that  is  the  name.  You  dismissed  her 
father  from  the  bank  last  year."  Her  eyes  fol- 
lowed him  as  he  stumbled  to  his  feet.  "But 
what  difference  does  it  make  whether  it's  she  or 
some  one  else?" 

He  couldn't  tell  her.  The  fear  of  the  vague 
nemesis  he  called  "chickens  coming  home  to 
roost"  was  too  obscure.  Listening  in  a  daze  to 
the  rest  of  his  instructions,  he  seized  them 
chiefly  because  they  would  ease  the  line  he  was 
to  take  with  Bob. 

He  was  to  give  him  no  hint  that  he,  the  father, 
had  heard  anything  of  the  Follett  girl.  The 
South  American  mission  could  stand  on  its  own 
merits  as  extremely  flattering.  Whatever  re- 
luctance Bob  might  feel,  he  would  see  the  oppor- 
tunity as  too  important  to  forego.  All  Junia 
begged  of  her  husband  was  to  know  nothing  of 
Bob's  love  affairs.  If  Bob  himself  brought  the 
subject  up,  it  would  be  enough  to  remain  firm 
on  the  question  of  money.  Of  the  rest,  Junia 

63 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

was  willing  to  take  charge,  as  she  would  explain 
to  him  when  he  came  home  in  the  afternoon. 

These  instructions  Collingham  did  his  best  to 
carry  out.    At  lunch,  in  the  house's  private  room 
at  the  Bowling  Green  Club,  he  approached  Mr. 
Huntley  on  the  subject  of  being  responsible  for 
Bob  on  the  errand  to  Asuncion,  and  Mr.  Huntley 
expressed  himself  as  delighted.    On  returning  to 
the  bank,  Collingham  asked  Miss  Ruddick  to 
bring  the  young  man  to  the  private  office. 
"Hello,  Bob!    How  are  things  going?" 
"So,  so,  dad,"  Bob  admitted,  guardedly 
"Sit  down.    I  want  to  talk  to  you."[ 
Bob  sat  down  gingerly,  warily,  scenting  some- 
thing in  the  wind,  much  like  Max  or  Dauphin 
from    a    person's    atmosphere.      Whatever    his 
mother  had  been  told  on  Saturday,  his  father 
might  have  learned  by  Wednesday.     Bob  would 
have  been  sure  of  this  were  it  not  that  his  mother 
often  had  curious  reserves. 

For  Collingham  there  was  nothing  to  do  but 
to  plunge  on  the  subject  of  South  America,  and 
he  plunged.  But,  in  his  dread  of  the  roosting 
chicken,  he  plunged  nervously,  with  a  tendency 
to  redden,  to  stammer,  and  otherwise  to  betray 
himself.  Before  he  had  finished  Bob  was  saying 
inwardly:  "Mother's  put  him  wise  to  Jennie 
and  I'm  to  be  packed  off.  Well,  we'll  see." 

"  It's  thumping  good  of  you  and  Mr.  Huntley, 
dad,"  he  said,  aloud;    "and  I  suppose  it  would 
do  if  I  gave  you  my  answer  in  a  day  or  two." 
"That's  the  girl,"  the  father  thought;   but  he 
64 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

obeyed  Junia's  injunction  as  to  not  being  ex- 
plicit when  it  came  to  words. 

"You  see,  it's  this  way,  Bob:  It's  not  exactly 
an  invitation  that  I'm  giving  you;  it's — it's  a 
decision  of  the  bank  of  which  you're  an  em- 
ployee. We  take  it  for  granted  that  you'll  go  if 
we  want  to  send  you." 

"And  I  take  it  for  granted  that  you  won't 
send  me  if  I  don't  want  to  go." 

Not  to  force  the  issue,  Collingham  left  the 
matter  there,  preferring  to  consult  Junia  as  to 
what  he  should  do  next.  To  this  end,  he  drove 
home  earlier  than  usual. 

It  added  to  Dauphin's  irritation  that  Max 
should  hear  the  motor  first.  V/ith  ears  cocked 
like  a  donkey's,  how  could  he  help  it?  There 
was  nothing  in  the  world  that  Dauphin  despised 
as  he  despised  the  police  dog's  ears.  They  were 
forever  pointed,  alert,  inquisitive,  ignoble.  But 
there  it  was!  Max  was  bounding  down  the 
driveway,  covering  yards  at  a  spring,  before  the 
setter  could  drag  himself  from  his  haunches. 
It  was  Max,  too,  who,  when  the  motor  passed 
the  oak,  gave  the  first  yelp  of  delight. 

But  it  was  Dauphin  who,  as  his  master  de- 
scended from  the  car,  entered  into  his  depression. 
It  was  he,  too,  who  perceived  the  conflict  of 
auras  when  wife  and  husband  met.  Waves  of 
unreasoned  dread  on  the  one  side  encountered  a 
force  of  clear-eyed  determination  on  the  other  as 
the  weltering  sea  comes  up  against  the  steadfast 
rocks. 

65 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

They  began  talking  as  they  turned  to  enter 
the  house,  continuing  the  conversation  within 
the  great  hall,  where  only  the  strip  of  red  carpet 
running  its  length  and  up  the  fine  stairway,  two 
or  three  bits  of  old  carved  English  oak,  and  the 
brass  touches  on  the  wrought-iron  baluster, 
relieved  the  admirable  nudity. 

"Now  come  in  here,"  she  said,  briskly,  having 
heard  all  that  had  passed  between  him  and  Bob. 

He  followed  her  into  the  library,  where  she  led 
the  way  to  the  desk. 

"Read  that." 

He  ran  his  eye  over  the  lines  written  in  her 
legible,  decorative  hand. 

COLLINGHAM  LODGE, 

MARILLO  PARK. 
DEAR  Miss  FOLLETT: 

My  husband  and  I  would  be  greatly  obliged  if  you  could 
give  us  a  half  hour  of  your  time  to  talk  over  matters  which 
may  prove  as  important  to  you  as  to  us.  If  you  could 
make  it  convenient  to  come  here  to-morrow,  Thursday, 
afternoon,  you  would  find  a  very  good  train  at  three- 
twenty-five,  and  one  by  which  to  return  at  five-forty- 
seven.  I  inclose  a  time-table,  and  you  would  be  met  at 
Marillo  Station. 

Yours  sincerely, 

JUNIA  COLLINGHAM. 

He  looked  at  her  wonderingly. 

"What's  the  big  idea?" 

"A  very  big  idea.  Don't  you  see?  We  can 
cut  the  ground  right  from  under  his  feet  without 
his  ever  thinking  we  had  anything  to  do  with  it. 
You  personally  needn't  be  supposed  to  know 

66 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

that  this  nonsense  has  ever  been  in  the  air.    It's 
too  late  for  me,  of  course,  because  he  and  I  have 
already  talked  of  it.    But  for  you — ' 
He  tapped  the  paper  in  his  hand. 
"  But  this  move  I  don't  understand." 
"Well,  sit  down  and  I'll  tell  you." 


CHAPTER  VI 

A "7"  the  minute  when  Junia  Collingham  was 
laying  before  her  husband  a  plan  which 
would  bring  comparative  wealth  to  the  Follett 
family,  a  number  of  things  were  happening  in 
and  about  New  York. 

First,  Lizzie  Follett  had  dropped  into  a  chair 
to  think,  an  action  rare  with  her.  She  generally 
thought  as  she  whisked  about  her  work,  but  this 
problem  called  for  concentration.  Briefly,  it  was 
as  to  how  to  cook  the  supper  without  heat.  The 
gas-man  had  just  gone  away,  and  the  gas  for 
the  range  had  been  cut  off  because  she  couldn't 
pay  a  bill  of  twenty-nine  dollars  and  sixty- 
seven  cents,  or  anything  on  account.  This  was 
Wednesday,  and  she  would  have  no  more  money 
till  the  children  got  their  various  pay-envelopes 
on  Saturday. 

Though  in  the  back  of  her  mind  she  blamed 
herself  for  an  unwise  distribution  of  the  week's 
funds,  it  was  one  of  those  situations  in  which  you 
blame  yourself  without  seeing  how  you  could 
have  done  otherwise.  With  six  to  feed,  and  all 
the  subsidiary  expenses  of  a  family  to  meet,  she 
had  twenty-two  dollars  a  week.  Of  his  eighteen, 
Teddy  gave  her  fifteen,  three  being  needed  for 
car  fares  and  other  small  necessities.  From  the 

68 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

six  she  earned  at  the  studio,  Jennie  contributed 
three.  Gladys,  who  was  now  a  cash  girl  on  seven 
a  week,  was  able  to  turn  in  four.  Gussie  brought 
nothing  to  the  common  fund  as  yet,  for  the  reason 
that  the  three-fifty  which  Madame  Corinne  con- 
ceded for  the  privilege  of  "teaching  her  the 
millinery"  allowed  no  margin  over  what  she  had 
to  spend. 

To  Lizzie,  during  the  past  six  months,  life  had 
become  an  exciting  game.  How  to  pay  the 
minimum  on  every  account  and  yet  keep  alive 
her  credit  had  been  the  calculation  with  which 
she  rose  in  the  morning  and  lay  down  at  night. 
It  was  a  game  that  could  be  played  successfully 
for  two  months,  or  three  months,  or  four.  When 
it  came  to  six,  the  heaping-up  of  unpaid  balances 
made  it  harder  to  go  on. 

It  was  making  it  impossible  to  go  on.  During 
the  past  fortnight  she  had  found  her  credit 
stopped  at  three  places  in  The  Square  where 
Pemberton  Heights  did  its  shopping.  In  vain 
she  had  tried  to  transfer  her  account  elsewhere, 
but  Pemberton  Heights  is  no  more  than  a  huge 
village  where  the  status  of  most  families  is  known. 
More  and  more  her  small  amount  of  cash  was 
needed  for  cash  purposes  in  order  that  the 
family  might  live. 

Lizzie  sat  down  to  cast  up  her  assets.  She  had 
the  small  remnants  of  a  ham  which  could  be 
eaten  cold.  She  had  bread  and  butter.  If  she 
could  only  make  tea.  .  .  She  might  have  done 
that  in  a  neighbor's  house,  but  she  shrank  from 

69 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

exposing  a  situation  which  a  lucky  stroke  might 
change. 

At  the  same  moment  Josiah  was  turning  away 
from  a  wooden  bar  which  shut  off  an  office  from 
the  public.  He  had  entered  and  stood  there, 
meek,  unobtrusive,  trembling,  while  none  of  the 
young  men  or  young  women  busy  at  desks  or 
with  one  another  paid  him  any  attention.  When 
a  girl  with  hair  combed  over  her  ears,  very  bright 
eyes,  and  very  short  skirts,  tripped  by  him  acci- 
dentally, he  managed  to  stammer  out  something 
in  which  she  caught  the  word  "job."  The  word 
being  significant,  and  Josiah's  appearance  more 
so,  she  whispered  to  a  gentleman,  who  left  his 
desk  and  came  forward. 

"No;  I'm  very  sorry.  We  can't  do  anything 
for  you." 

He  hadn't  waited  for  the  word  "job";  he 
hadn't  waited  for  Josiah  to  speak  at  all.  He 
knew  the  situation  so  well  that  his  method  was 
to  end  it  there  and  then.  Josiah  turned  away 
meekly  as  he  had  entered,  and  with  no  sinking 
of  the  heart.  His  heart  used  to  sink;  but  that 
was  four  and  five  months  previously,  before  he 
had  exhausted  his  emotions.  Now  the  bitterness 
of  death  was  past.  It  had  passed  day  by  day  and 
inch  by  inch,  by  stages  of  slow  agony,  leaving  him 
with  a  dried  soul  that  couldn't  suffer  any  more. 

And  also  at  this  minute  Teddy  was  standing 
in  his  cage  at  the  bank  in  a  very  peculiar  situ- 

70 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ation.  At  least  it  struck  him  as  peculiar,  be- 
cause for  the  first  time  he  perceived  its  oppor- 
tunities. 

For  Teddy,  too,  six  months  had  been  a  period 
of  development,  just  as  it  is  for  a  green  fruit 
when  you  pick  it  and  lay  it  in  the  sun.  It 
ripens,  but  it  ripens  green.  When  you  eat  it,  it 
has  a  green  flavor,  or  a  flat  flavor,  or  none  at  all. 
Teddy  was  a  fruit  to  be  left  on  the  tree  to  take 
its  time.  He  was  now  twenty-one,  with  the 
promptings  of  sixteen.  At  his  own  rate  of 
progress,  he  would  probably  have  reached  twenty 
by  the  time  he  was  twenty-two,  but  thirty  at 
twenty-five. 

As  it  was,  he  had  been  called  on  to  be  thirty 
when  his  growth  was  just  beginning.  Not  merely 
the  circumstances  had  made  this  demand  on 
him,  but  the  dependence,  more  or  less  uncon- 
scious, of  the  members  of  the  family.  They 
looked  to  him  to  do  something  big  because  he 
was  a  young  man.  Having  heard  of  other  young 
men  who  had  been  financially  heroic,  they  ex- 
pected him  to  be  the  same.  The  possibilities 
open  to  a  bank  clerk  of  twenty-one  had  no  rela- 
tion to  their  hopes.  Even  his  mother,  chiefly 
because  of  her  adoration,  seemed  to  feel  that  he 
should  spring  from  eighteen  to  a  hundred  dollars 
a  week  by  the  force  of  inner  flame. 

She  didn't  say  so,  of  course.    She  only  revealed 

her  sentiments  as  Pansy  revealed  hers,  by  an 

inextinguishable  look.     The  father  did  no  more 

than  throw  emphasis  on  the  boy's  responsibility. 

6  71 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Jennie  and  Gladys  never  said  anything  at  all, 
but  Gussie  was  quite  frank. 

"A  great  big  fellow  like  you  and  only  making 
eighteen  per!  Look  at  poor  momma,  working 
her  ringers  to  the  bone.  I'd  be  ashamed  if  I  were 
you.  Why,  Fred  Inglis  orders  his  clothes  at 
Love's  and  keeps  his  own  Ford." 

It  was  all  there  in  a  nut  shell — his  inability 
to  rise  to  the  occasion  in  a  land  where  everyone 
else  who  was  worth  his  salt  had  only  to  shake 
the  money  tree  and  pick  up  coin.  How  Fred 
Inglis  did  it  Teddy  couldn't  think,  when  your 
value  by  the  week  was  so  definitely  fixed  and  a 
raise  lay  so  far  ahead.  If  he  had  developed 
during  the  past  six  months,  it  was  mainly  through 
a  carking  sense  of  inefficiency. 

Meanwhile,  he  had  to  do  what  Gussie  told 
him — watch  his  mother  work  her  fingers  to  the 
bone.  In  spite  of  a  tendency  to  squabble,  the 
Folletts  were  an  affectionate  family,  and  the 
mother  was  the  center  of  their  love.  Teddy 
didn't  stop  to  analyze  what  she  was  to  them; 
he  only  knew  that  there  was  nothing  he 
wouldn't  be  to  her.  If  he  could  only  have 
compassed  it,  she  would  have  had  a  bar-pin  like 
their  neighbor,  Mrs.  Weatherby;  she  would 
have  worn  the  skunk  neckpiece  for  which  he 
had  once  heard  her  utter  a  desire;  she  would 
have  gone  out  in  his  Ford  oftener  than  Fred 
Inglis's  mother  in  his.  These  things  he  would 
have  done  for  her  and  more,  had  he  but  been  the 
financial  Titan  all  American  example  called  on 

72 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

him  to  become.  Between  Gussie's  taunts  and 
his  own  What  lack  I  yet?  he  was  reaching  a 
condition  of  despair. 

And  now,  on  this  particular  afternoon,  when 
nearly  everyone  had  left  the  bank  and  Mr. 
Brunt,  to  whom  he  was  specially  attached,  was 
working  later  than  usual,  there  was  the  fruit  of 
the  money  tree  piled  up  on  the  ground.  Mr. 
Brunt  had  gone  to  the  other  end  of  the  main 
office,  and  would  return  presently  to  stow  these 
piles  of  bills  in  the  safe.  These  bills  were  money. 
Teddy  had  never  consciously  dwelt  on  that  fact 
before.  He  had  been  in  this  same  situation  a 
thousand  times,  when  he  had  nothing  to  do  but 
put  out  his  hands  and  stuff  his  pockets  with  food 
and  fuel  and  gas  and  the  interest  on  the  mort- 
gage, and  all  the  other  things  of  which  there  was 
such  a  lack  at  home,  and  had  never  considered 
that  the  needed  things  were  here. 

He  remembered  that  as  a  child  in  Nova 
Scotia  he  would  occasionally  swipe  an  apple  from 
a  cart-load,  knowing  that  the  owner  couldn't 
miss  it,  and  had  the  same  sensation  now.  Here 
were  the  piles  of  bills,  all  arranged  in  rows  ac- 
cording to  their  values — a  pile  of  hundreds,  a 
pile  of  fifties,  a  pile  of  twenties,  and  so  on  down. 
Mr.  Brunt  would  come  back,  as  he  had  done  at 
other  times,  and  put  them  away  without  counting 
them.  Having  counted  them  already,  he  would 
accept  this  reckoning  for  the  day.  He,  Teddy, 
was  left  there  to  see  that  nothing  happened  to 
this  treasure. 

73 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

He  was  never  able  to  tell  how  it  came  about, 
but  without  seemingly  being  able  to  control  the 
action  of  his  hand  he  had  slipped  a  twenty- 
dollar  bill  from  the  top  of  the  pile  into  his  own 
pocket.  It  was  an  instant's  weakness,  followed 
the  next  instant  by  repentance.  Teddy  knew 
what  theft  was.  He  had  not,  through  his  father, 
had  so  much  to  do  with  banks  without  being 
fully  aware  of  the  sure  and  pitiless  punishment 
meted  out  to  it.  He  didn't  mean  to  steal.  He 
was  horror-stricken  at  the  act.  Quick  as  a  flash 
his  hand  went  into  his  pocket  again — but  Mr. 
Brunt  was  back.  The  thing  that  could  have  been 
done  at  once  had  to  be  deferred. 

Looking  for  a  chance  to  drop  the  bill  to  the 
floor  and  make  restitution  by  picking  it  up,  it 
was  annoying  that  Mr.  Brunt  should  give  him 
none.  Mr.  Brunt  seemed  possessed  by  a  demon 
of  speed,  so  quickly  had  he  locked  all  the  piles  in 
the  safe,  and  then  locked  the  cage  behind  him. 
Teddy  found  himself  outside  with  the  bill  still 
burning  in  his  pocket. 

Even  so  there  were  other  possibilities.  Going 
to  the  washroom,  he  hung  on  there  till  Mr.  Brunt 
had  gone  home.  The  cage  was  made  of  open 
wire-work.  It  was  a  simple  thing  to  slip  a  bill 
through  one  of  the  interstices.  It  would  be  found 
next  morning  on  the  floor  and  a  fresh  running- 
over  of  accounts  would  show  where  it  belonged. 
Mr.  Brunt  would  wonder  how  he  came  to  be  so 
careless,  but  with  his  balance  straight  he  would 
be  satisfied. 

74 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

But  as  Teddy  reached  the  cage,  there  was 
Doolan,  the  night  watchman.  Doolan  was  an 
ex-policeman,  too  old  for  public  office,  but  equal 
to  sounding  an  alarm  in  case  the  bank  was  being 
robbed.  He  was  a  friendly  soul,  and  in  strolling 
up  to  Teddy  had  no  motive  beyond  asking  after 
the  "ould  man"  and  whether  or  not  he  had  yet 
found  a  job.  But  Teddy  suspected  that  he  was 
being  watched.  He  didn't  know  but  that  Doolan 
might  have  seen  the  movement  of  the  hand 
which  snatched  the  bill  from  the  pile.  When  he 
stirred  to  go  homeward,  Doolan  might  clutch 
him  by  the  neck.  It  was  a  strange,  new  sensation 
to  feel  that  within  a  minute,  within  a  few  seconds, 
the  law  might  have  its  grip  on  him.  Having 
said  good-by  to  Doolan  and  turned  away,  he 
took  the  first  steps  in  expectation  of  a  stern 
command  to  come  back. 

It  was  another  strange  new  sensation  to  be 
walking  the  familiar  ways  of  Broad  Street  and 
Wall  Street  with  this  strange  new  consciousness. 
There  were  thousands  of  bright  young  men  and 
women  streaming  to  electrics,  subways,  and 
ferries  in  the  first  stages  of  commuting,  and 
among  them  he  bore  a  secret  mark.  Tramping 
along  in  the  crowd,  he  felt  like  a  soldier  marching 
with  his  comrades  to  the  trenches,  but  knowing 
himself  picked  for  death.  Luckily,  his  folly  was 
not  even  now  beyond  reparation.  He  would 
get  to  the  bank  early  in  the  morning,  discover 
the  cursed  bill  lying  in  some  artfully  chosen 
corner  of  the  floor,  and  restore  it  to  Mr.  Brunt. 

75 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

All  the  same,  it  was  a  relief  to  get  away  from  the 
fear  of  detection  which  he  felt  to  be  haunting 
the  streets  by  plunging  into  the  maw  of  the 
subway,  where  his  identity  was  swallowed  up. 

At  this  minute,  too,  in  the  studio,  Hubert 
Wray  was  leaning  over  Jennie  Follett's  shoulder 
and  placing  before  her  a  rough  pencil  sketch. 

"Take  it  away!"  Jennie  cried,  tearfully.  "I 
don't  want  to  look  at  it." 

"  But,  Jennie,  I  only  wish  you  to  see  how  little 
it  involves." 

It  was  a  drawing  of  a  nude  woman,  her  hair 
coiled  on  the  top  of  her  head,  sitting  very  upright 
in  a  marble  Byzantine  chair,  her  knees  pressed 
together  in  the  manner  of  the  Egyptian  cat- 
goddess.  On  a  level  with  her  face  and  poised  on 
the  tips  of  her  fingers,  she  held  a  human  skull 
which  she  inspected  with  slanting,  mysterious  eyes. 

Wray  continued  to  keep  the  sketch  before 
Jennie,  hanging  over  her  shoulder.  He  was  so 
close  that  she  felt  his  breath  on  her  neck.  He 
could  easily  have  pressed  his  lips  against  her 
amber-colored  hair,  and  Jennie  wished  he  would. 
But  having  long  ago  made  up  his  mind  that  she 
could  best  be  won  by  a  system  of  starving  out, 
he  refrained  from  doing  it.  As,  however,  she 
persisted  in  brushing  the  sketch  aside,  he  straight- 
ened himself  up. 

"Then,  Jennie,  I'm  afraid  I  can't  use  you  any 
more — that  is,  for  the  present.  Since  you  won't 
do  it,  I  must  get  some  one  who  will." 

76 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"You  could  paint  another  kind  of  picture," 
she  argued  indignantly,  "with  me  with  clothes 
on." 

f'You  don't  understand.  I'm  an  artist.  An 
artist  doesn't  paint  the  picture  he  chooses,  but 
the  one  that's  given  him  to  paint." 

"No  one  gave  you  this  to  paint.  It  isn't  a 
commission.  It's  just  your  own  bad  mind." 

"I'm  not  ready  to  explain  what  it  is.  You 
wouldn't  understand.  Something  comes  to  you. 
You've  got  to  obey  it.  This  is  the  picture  I've 
seen  and  which  I'm  obliged  to  do  next.  And, 
besides,  it  isn't  a  bad  mind,  Jennie.  The  human 
form  is  the  most — " 

"Oh,  you  don't  have  to  hand  me  out  any 
hokum  about  the  human  form.  It's  all  very 
well  in  its  place.  But  you  fellows  are  crazy — the 
way  you  stick  it  up  where  it  doesn't  belong. 
Look  at  that  picture  of  Sims's  you  were  all  so 
wild  about — three  women  walking  in  a  field, 
and  not  a  stitch  between  them.  Who'd  go  out 
like  that?  There's  no  sense  in  it — " 

"It  isn't  a  question  of  sense,  Jennie;  it's  one 
of  business.  If  you  want  to  be  a  model,  you 
must  be  a  model  and  meet  the  demands  of  the 
market." 

She  wore  the  cheap  linen  suit  that  had  been 
her  best  last  summer,  and  the  corresponding 
hat;  but  her  beauty  being  of  the  type  which 
subordinates  externals  to  itself,  she  was  more 
than  adorable;  she  was  elegant.  With  tears 
still  rolling  down  her  cheeks,  she  pointed  at  the 

77 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

sketch  Wray  held  in  his  hand  as  he  stood  before 
her  at  a  distance. 

"Do  you  know  what  my  father  would  do  if 
he  thought  I  was  going  to  be  painted  like  that? 
He'd  turn  me  out  of  doors." 

Wray  tossed  the  sketch  on  the  table. 

"Then,  Jennie,  there's  no  use  talking  of  it  any 
more.  You're  not  that  kind  of  a  model,  and  it's 
that  kind  of  a  model  I'm  looking  for." 

"I'm  the  kind  of  model  you  were  looking  for 
when  you  put  that  advertisement  in  the  paper 
nearly  a  year  ago.  I  answered  it  because  you 
said  a  pretty  girl,  not  a  professional — " 

"Yes;  that  was  a  year  ago.  That's  what  I 
wanted  then.  But  now  it's  something  else.  It 
doesn't  follow  that  because  you're  satisfied  with 
an  egg  for  breakfast,  that  an  egg  will  be  enough 
for  every  meal  all  the  rest  of  your  life." 

She  looked  up  reproachfully. 

"Yes;  all  the  rest  of  your  life!  That's  the 
way  you  talk.  Nothing  will  ever  be  enough  for 
you  all  the  rest  of  your  life." 

"No,  Jennie;  nothing — not  as  far  as  I  see 
now." 

"And  yet  you  expect  me  to  stake  every- 
thing— " 

"You  must  choose  your  words  there,  Jennie. 
I  don't  expect  you  to  do  anything.  There  may 
have  been  a  time  when  I  hoped — but  that's  all 
over.  We  won't  talk  of  it.  You've  made  up  your 
mind;  I  must  make  up  mine.  There's  nothing 
between  us  now  but  a  question  of  business. 

78 


I'm  looking  for  a  model  who  does  this  kind  of 
thing,  and  it  doesn't  suit  you  to  serve  my  turn. 
Well,  that  settles  it,  doesn't  it?  Our  little  ac- 
count is  paid  up  to  date,  and  so — " 

She  stumbled  to  her  feet.  The  only  form  her 
resentment  took  was  a  trembling  of  the  lip  and 
the  streaming  of  more  tears. 

"But  what  can  I  do?" 

"Do  you  mean  for  a  living?'* 

As  she  nodded  speechlessly,  he  smiled,  with  a 
faint  shrug  of  the  shoulders. 

"That's  not  for  me  to  decide,  is  it,  Jennie? 
Once  you've  left  me — " 

"I'm  not  leaving  you.  You're  driving  me 
away." 

"Suppose  we  said  that  life  was  separating  us? 
Wouldn't  that  express  it  better?  We've — we've 
liked  each  other.  I've  never  made  any  secret 
of  it  on  my  side — have  I,  Jennie? — though 
you're  so  terribly  discreet  on  yours.  And  yet 
life- 

"I've  only  been  discreet  about  one  thing." 

"  But  that  one  thing  is  the  whole  business." 

"And  I  wouldn't  be  discreet  about  that  if 
there  was  any  other  way." 

"There's  the  way  I've  told  you  about." 

"Yes;  and  be  left  high  and  dry  after  two  or 
three  years,  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other." 

"Isn't  that  looking  pretty  far  ahead?" 

"It's  not  looking  farther  ahead  than  a  girl 
has  to.  It's  easy  enough  to  talk.  There  you'd 
be,  able  to  walk  off  without  a  sign  on  you; 

79 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

whereas  I'd  have  to  lie  down  and  die  or — or  find 
some  one  else." 

"Well,  there'd  be  that  possibility,  wouldn't 
there?  They're  not  so  difficult  for  a  pretty  girl 
to  find  when — " 

She  stamped  her  foot. 

"I  hate  you!" 

"Oh  no,  you  don't,  Jennie.  You  love  me — 
only,  you  won't  let  yourself — " 

"And  I  never  will — never — never — never!  Not 
if  I  was  starving  in  the  streets — so  help  me  God ! " 

She  was  running  toward  the  model's  exit 
when  he  called  after  her. 

"Then  you  leave  me  to  work  with  another 
woman,  Jennie — another  woman  sitting  in  your 
place — another  woman — "  When  she  threw 
him  a  despairing  glance  he  snatched  the  sketch 
from  the  table  and  held  it  up  to  her.  "Another 
woman — dressed  like  that!" 

But  out  on  the  stairs  she  paused.  Anger  was 
giving  place  to  fear.  It  was,  first  of  all,  a  fear 
of  the  other  woman  dressed  like  that,  and  then  it 
was  a  fear  not  less  agonizing  of  the  loss  of  her 
six  a  week. 

Her  six  a  week  was  all  that  stood  between 
Jennie  and  the  not  very  carefully  veiled  contempt 
of  the  family.  In  the  testing  to  which  the  past 
half  year  had  subjected  them  all,  Jennie  had  not 
made  very  good.  Six  a  week  had  been  her 
measure.  For  obscure  reasons  which  none  of 
them  could  fathom,  she  had  proved  incapable  of 
really  lucrative  work.  She  had  tried  to  get  em- 

80 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ployment  with  other  artists  who  would  leave  her 
free  for  her  hours  with  Wray,  but  she  had  failed. 
She  had  failed,  too,  in  stores,  factories,  offices, 
and  dressmaking  establishments.  Perhaps  they 
saw  she  was  only  half  hearted  in  her  attempts; 
perhaps  her  air  of  helplessness  told  against  her. 
"She  was  too  much  like  a  lady,"  had  been  one 
employer's  verdict,  and  possibly  that  was  true. 
Whatever  the  reason,  she  seemed  a  creature  not 
primarily  meant  to  work,  but  to  be  utilized  in 
some  other  way.  The  question  was  as  to  that 
way.  "You're  splendid  to  love,"  little  Gladys 
had  whispered  one  day,  when  Jennie  was  crying 
to  herself,  and  much  in  her  recent  experience 
confirmed  this  opinion.  In  her  applications  for 
something  to  do,  it  had  more  than  once  been 
made  plain  to  her  that  money  could  be  made  by 
other  means  than  by  punching  a  time  clock  at 
seven. 

But  she  couldn't  retrace  her  steps  and  go  back 
to  Wray.  She  thought  of  it.  She  had  chosen  to 
descend  by  the  stairs  instead  of  by  the  lift  which 
served  the  huge  studio  building,  in  order  to  give 
herself  the  chance  of  changing  her  mind.  She 
went  down  a  few  steps  and  stood  still,  then  a 
few  more  steps  and  stood  still.  If  it  had  been 
only  a  question  of  the  money  she  might  have 
swallowed  her  pride  and  returned  to  throw  her- 
self at  his  feet. 

But  there  was  the  other  woman — dressed  like 
that!  He  had  dared  to  invoke  her.  Well,  let  him 
invoke  her.  Let  him  paint  her;  let  him  do  any- 

81 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

thing  he  liked.  She,  Jennie,  would  break  her 
heart  over  it;  but  it  would  be  easier  to  break 
her  heart  than  go  back. 

And  yet  not  to  go  back  made  her  feet  like  lead 
as  she  dragged  herself  down  the  interminable 
steps. 


s 


CHAPTER  VII 
HALL  I  ever  go  in  or  out  of  this  door 


again  r 


Jennie  lingered  on  the  threshold  to  ask  herself 
this  question,  and,  as  she  did  so,  saw  Bob  Col- 
lingham  lift  his  hat. 

For  the  time  being  she  had  forgotten  him. 
That  is,  she  had  a  way  of  putting  him  out  of  her 
mind  except  when,  as  he  expressed  it  to  herself, 
he  came  bothering  her.  Bothering  her  meant 
asking  her  to  marry  him,  which  he  had  done  per- 
haps twenty  times.  Each  time  she  refused  him 
she  considered  that  it  was  for  good.  There  was 
a  quality  in  him  that  raised  her  ire — a  certainty 
that,  pressed  by  need,  she  would  one  day  come 
to  him.  That,  Jennie  said  to  herself,  would  be 
the  last  thing!  She  wouldn't  do  it  as  long  as 
there  was  any  other  possibility  on  earth.  In 
view,  however,  of  the  state  of  things  at  home 
and  Wray's  cold-bloodedness  at  the  studio  it  had 
sometimes  seemed  to  her  of  late  as  if  earth  would 
not  afford  her  any  other  possibility. 

If  she  welcomed  him  now,  it  was  chiefly  as  a 
distraction  from  thoughts  which,  were  she  to 
keep  dwelling  on  them,  would  drive  her  mad. 
Her  temperament  being  naturally  happy,  anguish 
was  the  more  anguishing  for  being  so  unnatural 

83 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

The  mere  necessity  of  having  to  strive  with  Bob 
called  forth  in  her  that  spirit  of  sex-wrestling 
which  was  not  so  much  second  nature  in  her  as 
it  was  first. 

She  greeted  him,  therefore,  with  a  sick  little 
smile,  and  allowed  him  to  limp  along  beside  her. 
The  studio  building  was  in  a  street  in  the  Thirties 
and  east  of  Lexington  Avenue.  To  take  the  way 
by  which  she  usually  went,  they  sauntered 
toward  the  sunset. 

"You're  in  trouble,  Jennie,  aren't  you?" 

The  kindly  tone  touched  her.  He  was  always 
kind.  He  was  always  looking  for  little  things 
he  could  do.  It  was  part  of  the  trouble  with 
him  from  her  point  of  view  that  he  was  so 
watchful  and  overshadowing.  He  poured  out  so 
much  more  than  her  cup  was  able  to  receive 
that  he  frightened  her.  All  the  same,  his  sym- 
pathy, coming  at  this  minute,  started  her  tears 
afresh. 

"Is  it  things  at  home?"  he  persisted,  when 
she  didn't  respond. 

Thinking  this  enough  for  him  to  know,  she 
admitted  that  it  was. 

"I've  got  something  in  my  pocket  that  would 
— that  would  help  all  that — in  the  long  run." 

From  anyone  else  this  would  have  alarmed  her. 
She  would  have  taken  it  to  mean  money,  money 
which  she  would  in  her  own  way  be  expected  to 
repay.  As  it  was  she  merely  turned  her  swim- 
ming eyes  toward  him  in  mild  curiosity. 

"Look!" 

84 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Seeing  a  little  white  box  which  could  contain 
nothing  but  a  ring  held  between  his  thumb  and 
forefinger  on  the  edge  of  his  waistcoat  pocket, 
she  flushed  with  annoyance. 

"I  think  you'd  better  go  away,"  she  said, 
coldly,  pausing  to  give  him  the  chance  to  take 
his  leave. 

"And  chuck  you  back  upon  your  trouble?" 

The  argument  was  more  effective  than  he 
knew.  Jennie  became  aware  that  even  this  little 
bit  of  drama  had  put  home  conditions  and  Wray's 
cruelty  a  perceptible  distance  behind  her.  It 
was  sheer  terror  at  being  thrown  on  them  again 
that  induced  her  to  walk  on,  tacitly  permitting 
him  to  stay  with  her. 

"You  can't  be  saved  from  one  kind  of  trouble 
by  getting  into  another,"  she  argued,  ungra- 
ciously. "The  fire's  not  much  of  a  relief  from  the 
frying  pan." 

"It  is  if  it  doesn't  burn  you — if  it  only  warms 
and  comforts  you  and  makes  it  easier  to  live." 

"This  fire  would  burn  me — to  death." 

"Oh  no,  it  wouldn't;  because  I'd  be  there. 
I'd  be  the  stoker,  to  see  that  it  was  kept  in  the 
furnace.  The  furnace  in  the  house,  Jennie,  is 
like  the  heart  in  the  body — something  out  of 
sight,  but  hot  and  glowing,  and  cheering  every- 
body up."  If  she  could  have  listened  to  such 
words  from  Hubert  Wray,  she  thought,  how 
enraptured  she  would  have  been.  "Did  you 
ever  hear  the  story  of  the  guy  who  gave  us  fire 
in  the  first  place  ? "  Bob  continued,  as  she  walked 

85 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

on  and  said  nothing.  "You  know  we  didn't  have 
any  fire  on  earth — at  least,  that's  the  tune  to 
which  the  rig  is  sung.  The  gods  had  fire  in 
heaven,  but  men  had  to  shiver." 

"Why  didn't  they  freeze  to  death?" 

"They  did — in  a  parable  way.  It  wasn't  life 
they  lived;  it  was  a  great  big  creeping  horror 
on  the  edge  of  nothing.  Then  this  old  bird — I 
forget  his  name — went  up  to  heaven- — " 

"How  did  he  do  that?" 

"The  story  doesn't  tell;  but  up  he  went, 
stole  the  fire,  and  brought  it  down.  After  that, 
they  were  able  to  open  the  ball  we  call  'civiliza- 
tion,' which  gives  every  one  a  good  time." 

"Oh,  does  it?    Much  you  know!" 

"I  know  this  much,  Jennie — that  I  could 
give  you  a  good  time  if  you'd  let  me." 

"You  couldn't  give  me  the  good  time  I  want." 

"But  I  could  make  you  want  the  good  time 
I'd  give  you,  which  would  come  to  the  same 
thing.  I  imagine  the  folks  on  earth  didn't  think 
much  of  the  fire  from  heaven — beforehand;  but 
once  they'd  got  it,  they  knew  what  it  meant  to 
them.  That's  the  way  you'd  feel,  Jennie,  if  you 
married  me.  You  can't  begin  to  fancy  now — " 
On  coming  in  sight  of  a  line  of  taxicabs  drawn 
up  before  a  hotel,  he  broke  off  to  say,  "  Do  you 
see  those  taxis,  Jennie?" 

She  replied  that  she  did. 

"Well,  one  of  them  may  mean  a  great  deal  to 
you  and  me." 

"Which  one  of  them?" 
86 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Whichever  one  we  get  into." 

"Why  should  we  get  into  it?'* 

"Because" — he  tapped  the  white  box  in  his 
waistcoat  pocket — "this  little  thing  I've  got  in 
here  wouldn't  do  us  any  good  without  something 
else.  We  should  have  to  go  after  it  together." 

Her  mystified  expression  told  him  that  she 
was  in  the  dark. 

"  It's  something  we  should  have  to  ask  for,  and 
to  sign — Robert  Bradley  Collingham,  bachelor, 
and  Jane  Scarborough  Follett,  spinster — I  be- 
lieve that's  the  way  it  runs." 

"Oh!"  The  low  ejaculation  was  just  enough 
to  show  that  she  understood. 

"Why  shouldn't  we,  Jennie?  It  wouldn't 
take  half  an  hour  to  get  there  and  back." 

"Back?"  She  was  so  dazed  that  she  echoed 
the  word  more  or  less  unconsciously. 

They  came  in  sight  of  a  low  brown  tower  at 
which  he  pointed  with  his  stick.  *'Do  you  see 
that  church?  Well,  that  church  has  got  a  par- 
son— quite  a  decent  sort  for  a  parson — " 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"Because  I  talked  to  him — about  half  an  hour 
ago.  I  said  that  if  he  was  going  to  be  at  home, 
we  might  look  in  on  him  toward  the  end  of  the 
afternoon." 

"You  had  no  right  to  say  anything  of  the 
kind." 

"  I  know  I  hadn't,  but  I  took  a  chance.  Won't 
you  take  a  chance,  too,  Jennie?  It  would  mean 
the  beginning  of  the  end  of  all  your  troubles. 
7  87 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

In  the  long  run,  if  not  in  the  short  run,  I  could 
take  them  off  your  hands." 

That  she  should  be  dead  to  this  argument  was 
not  in  human  nature.  Her  basic  conception  of 
a  man  was  of  one  who  would  relieve  her  of  her 
burdens.  Helplessness  was  a  large  part  of  her 
appeal.  That  marriage  meant  being  taken  care 
of  imparted,  according  to  her  thinking,  its  chief 
common  sense  to  the  institution.  She  shrank 
from  marrying  just  to  be  taken  care  of;  but  if 
there  was  no  other  way,  and  if  in  this  way  she 
could  bring  to  the  family  the  stupendous  Colling- 
ham  connection  in  lieu  of  her  six  a  week  .  .  . 
She  made  up  her  mind  to  temporize. 

"What  makes  you  in  such  an  awful  hurry? 
We  could  do  it  any  other  day — " 

"Did  you  ever  see  a  sick  man  who  wasn't  in 
an  awful  hurry  to  get  well?" 

"You're  not  as  bad  as  all  that." 

"Listen,  Jennie,"  he  said,  with  an  ardor  en- 
hanced by  her  hints  at  relenting;  "listen,  and 
I'll  tell  you  what  I  am.  I'm  like  a  chap  that's 
been  cut  in  two,  who  only  lives  because  he  knows 
the  other  half  will  be  joined  to  him  again." 

"That's  all  very  well;  but  where's  the  other 
half?" 

"Here."  He  touched  her  lightly  on  the  arm. 
"You're  the  other  half  of  me,  Jennie;  I'm  the 
other  half  of  you." 

She  laughed  ruefully. 

"That's  news  to  me." 

"I   thought   it   might   be.     That's   why   I'm 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

telling  you.    You  don't  suppose  any  other  fellow 
could  be  to  you  what  I'd  be,  do  you?" 

"I  don't  know  what  you'd  be  to  me  because 
I've  so  many  other  things  to  think  of  first." 

"What  sort  of  things?" 

"What  your  folks  would  say,  for  one." 

He  replied,  with  a  shade  of  embarrassment: 

"They'd  say  some  pretty  mean  things,  to 
begin  with." 

"And  to  end  with?" 

"They'd  give  in.  They'd  have  to.  Families 
always  do  when  you  only  leave  them  Hobson's 
choice." 

She  dropped  into  the  studio  idiom. 

"That  wouldn't  be  all  pie  for  me,  would  it?" 

"Is  anything  ever  all  pie?  You've  got  to 
work  for  your  living  in  this  old  world  if  you  want 
to  eat.  I'm  ready  to  work  for  this,  Jennie.  I'm 
ready  to  move  mountains  for  it,  and,  by  God! 
I'm  going  to  move  them!  But  do  you  know 
why?" 

She  said,  shyly,  "I  suppose  because  you  like 
me." 

"I  don't  know  whether  I  do  or  not.  That's 
not  what  I  think  about  first."  Though  they  had 
not  yet  reached  the  line  of  taxicabs,  he  paused 
to  make  an  explanation.  "Suppose  you  were 
inventing  a  machine  and  had  got  it  pretty  well 
fitted  together,  only  that  you  couldn't  make  it 
work.  And  suppose,  one  day,  you  found  the 
very  part  that  was  missing — the  thing  that 
would  make  it  run.  You'd  know  you'd  have  to 

89 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

have  that  one  thing,  wouldn't  you  ?  You'd  have 
to  have  it — or  your  life  wouldn't  be  worth 
while." 

"I  never  heard  any  other  man  talk  like 
that." 

"Listen,  Jennie.  There  are  men  and  men. 
They'll  go  into  two  big  bunches.  To  one  kind 
women  are  like  whisky — some  better  than  others, 
but  all  good.  If  they  can't  have  Mary,  Susan  '11 
do,  and  when  they're  tired  of  Susan  they'll  run 
after  Ann.  That's  one  kind  of  fellow,  and  he's 
in  the  great  majority.  They're  polygamous  by 
nature,  those  chaps.  I  suppose  the  Lord  made 
them  so.  Anyhow,  as  far  as  I  can  see — and  I've 
seen  pretty  far — they  can't  help  themselves." 
He  drew  a  long  breath.  "Then  there's  another 
kind." 

If  Jennie  listened  with  attention,  it  was  not 
because  she  was  interested  in  him,  but  in  Hubert 
Wray.  Hubert  had  more  than  once  said  things 
of  the  same  kind.  He  had  declared  male  con- 
stancy to  be  outside  the  possibilities  of  flesh  and 
blood,  and,  with  her  preference  for  cave  men, 
Jennie  had  agreed  with  him.  That  is,  she  had 
agreed  with  him  as  to  everyone  but  himself. 
Others  could  take  their  pleasure  where  and  as 
they  found  it;  but  she  could  not  conceive  of  any 
man  loving  her,  or  of  herself  loving  any  man, 
unless  it  was  for  life.  On  the  subject  of  constancy 
or  inconstancy,  this  was  her  sole  reservation. 

"You'll  think  me  an  awful  chump,  Jennie,  but 
I'm  that  other  kind." 

90 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

She  threw  him  a  sidelong  glance  of  some 
perplexity. 

"You  mean  the  kind  that — " 

"I'm  not  polygamous,"  he  declared,  as  one 
who  confessed  a  criminal  tendency.  "There  it 
is,  laid  out  flat.  I'm — "  He  hesitated  before 
using  the  term  lest  she  might  not  understand  it. 
"There's  a  word  for  my  kind,"  he  went  on, 
tenderly.  "It's  monogamous." 

She  made  a  little  sound  of  dismay  at  the 
strangeness,  it  almost  seemed  the  indecency,  of 
the  syllables. 

"Yes;  I  thought  you  might  never  have  heard 
it,"  he  pursued,  in  the  same  tender  strain,  "but 
it  means  the  opposite  of  polygamous.  A  polyg- 
amous guy  wants  to  marry  all  the  wives  he  can 
make  love  to.  A  one-wife  chap  like  me  asks  for 
nothing  so  much  as  to  be  true  to  the  girl  he  loves. 
I'm  that  kind,  Jennie." 

To  his  amazement,  and  somewhat  to  his  joy, 
he  saw  a  tear  trickle  down  her  cheek.  It  was  a 
tear  of  regret  that  Hubert  couldn't  have  ex- 
pressed himself  like  this,  but  Bob  thought  her 
touched  by  his  appeal.  It  encouraged  him  to 
continue  with  accentuated  warmth. 

"You've  heard  of  what  they  call  the  battle  of 
the  sexes,  haven't  you?" 

She  thought  she  had. 

"Well,  that's  what  it  comes  from  chiefly — the 
crowds  of  polygamous  men  and  the  small  number 
of  polygamous  women;  or  else  it's  the  crowds  of 
monogamous  women  and  the  small  number  of 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

monogamous  men.  Out  of  every  hundred  men, 
about  ninety  are  polygamous,  and.  ten  want  only 
one  woman  for  a  lifetime.  Out  of  every  hundred 
women,  ninety  are  satisfied  to  love  one  man,  and 
the  other  ten  are  rovers.  Don't  you  see  what  a 
bad  fit  it  makes?" 

"  Yes ;  but  how  do  you  know  I'm  not  one  of  the 
rovers?" 

"You  couldn't  be,  Jennie.  Even  if  I  thought 
you  might  be,  I'd  be  willing  to  take  a  chance. 
And  the  reason  I've  spun  this  rigmarole  to  you 
is  because,  if  you  don't  take  me,  it  '11  be  ten  to 
one  that  you'll  fall  into  the  hands  of  one  of  the 
gay  ninety  who'll  make  your  life  a  hell.  I'd  hate 
that.  God!  how  I  should  hate  it!  Even  if  I 
didn't  care  anything  about  you,  I  should  want 
to  marry  you,  just  to  save  you  from  some  fancy 
man  who'd  think  no  more  of  breaking  your  heart 
than  he  would  of  smashing  an  egg-shell." 

As  they  walked  on  toward  the  row  of  public 
conveyances,  he  explained  himself  further.  On 
Monday  next  he  might  sail  for  South  America. 
But  he  couldn't  do  this  leaving  everything  at 
loose  ends  between  them.  If  she  married  him, 
he  could  go  off  with  an  easy  mind,  and  they  could 
keep  their  secret  till  his  return.  In  the  mean- 
while he  would  be  able  to  supply  her  with  a 
little  cash,  not  much,  he  was  afraid,  as  dad  kept 
so  tight  a  rubber  band  round  the  pocketbook. 
It  would,  however,  be  something,  and  he  would 
know  that  she  could  give  up  her  work  at  the 
studio  without  danger  of  starving  to  death. 

92 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"And  you  might  as  well  do  it  first  as  last, 
Jennie,"  he  summed  up,  "because  I  mean  that 
you  shall  do  it  sometime." 

"And  suppose,"  she  objected,  "that  you  came 
back  from  South  America  in  six  months'  time 
— and  were  sorry.  Where  should  I  be  then?" 

He  argued  that  this  was  impossible.  A  monog- 
amous man  always  knew  his  mate  as  a  monog- 
amous bird  knew  his.  It  was  instinct  that  told 
them  both,  and  instinct  never  went  wrong. 

They  reached  the  row  of  taxis,  and,  in  spite  of 
the  queer  looks  of  the  passers-by,  he  took  her 
by  the  hand. 

"Come,  Jennie,  come!" 

But  she  hung  back. 

"Oh,  Bob,  how  can  I?  All  of  a  sudden  like 
this!" 

"It  might  as  well  be  all  of  a  sudden  as  any 
other  way,  since  you're  my  woman  and  I'm  your 
man." 

"But  I  don't  believe  it." 

"Then  I'll  prove  to  you  that  it's  so." 

Though  he  could  not  do  this,  she  went  with  him 
in  the  end.  She  was  not  won;  she  was  not  more 
moved  by  his  suit  than  she  had  been  at  other 
times;  she  still  shrank  from  the  scar  on  his  brow 
and  the  touch  of  his  tremendous  hands.  But  she 
was  afraid  of  letting  him  go,  of  dropping  back 
into  the  horror  of  no  lover  in  the  studio  and  no 
money  to  bring  home.  To  do  this  thing  would 
save  her  from  that  emptiness,  even  if  it  led  to 
something  worse.  Worse  would  be  easier  to 

93 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

bear  than  returning  to  nothing  but  a  void;  and 
so  slowly,  reluctantly,  with  anguish  in  her  heart, 
she  let  herself  be  helped  into  the  shabby  vehicle. 

An  hour  or  so  later,  Teddy  reached  home. 
He  arrived  breathless,  because  he  had  run  nearly 
all  the  way  from  the  street-car.  In  the  empty 
spaces  of  Indiana  Avenue  he  felt  himself  con- 
spicuous. He  knew  it  was  fancy,  that  no  hint 
of  his  folly  could  have  come  to  this  quiet  suburb, 
and  that  his  theft  could  not  possibly  be  discov- 
ered as  yet,  even  by  those  most  concerned.  But 
he  was  not  used  to  a  guilty  conscience.  Already 
in  imagination  he  saw  himself  tried,  sentenced, 
and  serving  a  long  sentence  at  Bitterwell,  of 
which  he  had  once  seen  the  grim  gray  walls. 

"God!  I'd  shoot  myself  first!"  was  his  com- 
ment to  himself,  as  he  hurried  past  the  trim 
grassplots  where  care-free  men  in  shirt  sleeves 
were  watering  their  bits  of  lawn. 

It  was  Pansy  who  first  knew  that  something 
was  amiss.  At  sound  of  his  hand  on  the  door 
knob  she  had  come  scampering,  with  little 
silvery  yelps,  and  had  suddenly  been  checked  by 
the  atmosphere  he  threw  out.  Pansy  knew  what 
wrongdoing  was;  she  knew  the  pangs  of  remorse. 
She  had  once  run  away  from  being  shut  up  in  the 
coalbin,  her  fate  when  the  family  went  to  the 
movies,  and  had  been  lost  for  half  a  day.  The 
agony  of  being  adrift  and  the  joy  of  seeing 
Gussie  come  whistling  and  calling  down  the 
Palisade  Walk  formed  the  great  central  escapade 

94 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

in  Pansy's  memory.  For  days  afterward,  when- 
ever the  family  spoke  of  it,  she  would  stand 
with  forepaws  planted  apart,  and  head  hanging 
dejectedly,  aware  that  no  terms  could  be  scathing 
enough  fully  to  cover  her  guilt. 

And  here  was  Teddy  in  the  same  state  of  mind. 
Pansy  had  learned  that  the  great  race  could 
suffer;  but  she  hadn't  supposed  that  it  could 
get  into  scrapes  like  herself.  All  she  could  do  on 
second  thoughts  was  to  creep  forward  timidly, 
raise  herself  on  her  hind  legs,  with  her  paws 
against  his  shin,  and  tell  him  that  whatever  the 
trouble  was  she  had  been  through  it  all. 

He  paid  her  no  attention  because,  as  he  looked 
into  the  living  room,  Gladys  was  seated  at  a 
table,  crying,  her  hands  covering  her  face.  At 
the  same  time  Gussie  was  peacocking  up  and 
down  the  room,  saying  things  to  her  little  sister 
that  were  apparently  not  comforting.  Now  that 
Gussie,  at  Madame  Corinne's  request,  had  "put 
up"  her  hair,  her  great  beauty  was  apparent. 
Her  face  had  not  the  guileless  purity  of  Jennie's, 
but  it  had  more  intellectual  vigor  and  much 
more  fire. 

Gladys  was  Teddy's  pet,  as  she  was  her 
father's.  Of  the  three  girls,  she  was  the  plain 
one,  a  little  red-haired,  snub-nosed  thing,  with 
some  resemblance  to  Pansy,  and  a  heart  of  gold. 
Teddy  went  over  and  laid  his  hand  on  her  fiery 
crown. 

"Say,  poor  little  kiddie,  what's  the  matter?" 

"It's  my  feet,"  Gladys  moaned. 
95 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"And  she  thinks  that  learning  the  millinery 
at  three-fifty  per  is  all  jazz  and  cat-step," 
Gussie  declared,  grandly.  "Well,  let  her  try  it 
and  see.  She's  welcome.  My  soul  and  body! 
Corinne  would  blow  her  across  the  river  when 
she  got  into  a  temper.  I  say  that  if  you're  a 
cash  girl  you've  got  to  take  the  drawbacks  of  a 
cash  girl,  and  what's  the  use  of  kicking?  If 
you're  on  your  feet,  you're  on  your  feet.  Rub 
'em  with  oil  and  buck  up.  That's  what  I  say." 

"It's  all  very  well  for  you  to  talk,  spit-cat," 
Gladys  retorted.  "All  you've  got  to  do  is  to 
play  with  ribbons  as  if  you  were  dressing  a  doll. 
If  you  had  to  run  like  Pansy  every  time  some 
stuck-up  thing  calls,  'Ca-ash!' — " 

Gussie  undulated  her  person  and  her  out- 
stretched arms  in  sheer  joy  of  the  dancing  step 
as  she  strutted  up  and  down. 

"That's  right,  old  girl.  Blame  it  on  me. 
I'm  always  the  one  that's  in  the  wrong  in  this 
house.  If  Master  Teddy  lets  a  glass  fall  and 
breaks  it,  as  he  did  last  night,  I  pushed  it  out  of 
his  hand  on  purpose,  though  I'm  in  the  next 
room.  All  the  same,  I  say,  'Buck  up,'  and  I 
don't  care  who  says  different.  Sniffing  won't 
cure  your  feet  or  give  you  a  brother  like  Fred 
Inglis  who  can  pay  for  a  woman  to  do  all  the 
heavy  work,  and  his  mother  hardly  lifting  a 
hand." 

Teddy  passed  on  to  the  kitchen  to  see  if  his 
mother  was  there. 

She  was  seated  at  a  table  with  a  ham  bone 
96 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

before  her,  and  from  it  was  paring  the  last  rags 
of  the  meat.  He  tried  to  take  his  old-time  tone 
of  gayety. 

"  Hello,  ma !  At  it  again  ?  What  are  you  giving 
us  for  supper?  Something  good,  I'll  bet." 

Lizzie  went  on  working  without  lifting  her 
eyes.  She  didn't  even  smile.  Teddy  sensed 
something  new  in  the  way  of  care,  as  Pansy 
had  sensed  it  in  him.  He  stood  at  a  little 
distance,  waiting  for  the  look  that  had  never 
failed  to  welcome  him,  but  which  this  time 
didn't  come. 

"What's  the  matter,  ma?  Has  anything  gone 
wrong?" 

Putting  down  the  ham,  Lizzie  raised  her  eyes, 
though  with  no  light  in  them. 

"It's  nothing  so  very  wrong,  dear,  but  I 
haven't  told  your  sisters  because  it's  no  use  to 
worry  them  if — " 

"What  is  it,  ma  ?    Out  with  it/' 

She  told  him.  If  it  was  necessary  to  go  with- 
out a  hot  meal  between  Wednesday  and  Satur- 
day, of  course  it  could  be  done;  but  even  on 
Saturday  the  gas  people  would  demand  fifteen 
dollars  on  account  before  the  gas  would  be 
turned  on  again.  There  were  just  two  possibil- 
ities :  The  father  might  come  home  with  the  news 
that  he  had  found  a  job,  or  Teddy  might  have — 
she  didn't  believe  it,  but  he  had  talked  of  saving 
for  a  new  suit  of  clothes — Teddy  might  have 
fifteen  dollars  laid  away. 

He  turned  his  back  and  walked  out  of  the 
97 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

kitchen.  He  did  it  so  significantly  that  it  seemed 
to  the  mother  there  could  be  only  one  meaning 
to  the  act.  He  had  saved  the  money  and  re- 
sented being  robbed  of  it.  She  knew  he  was 
something  of  a  coxcomb,  and  had  always  been 
proud  that  he  could  look  so  neat.  He  had  only 
two  suits,  a  common  one  and  a  best  one,  but 
even  the  common  one  was  as  brushed  and  pressed 
and  stylish  as  if  he  had  a  valet.  Nevertheless, 
his  great  activity  and  his  love  of  rough-and- 
tumble  skylarking  made  him  hard  on  clothes  in 
the  sense  of  wear,  and  the  common  one  was 
growing  shiny  at  the  seams  and  thin  where  there 
was  most  attrition.  A  new  suit  was  an  urgent 
necessity;  so  that  if  he  had  a  few  dollars  put 
away  toward  getting  it,  it  would  be  no  wonder  if 
it  hurt  him  to  be  asked  to  give  them  up. 

But  Teddy  had  no  few  dollars  put  away. 
When  the  fund  for  the  new  suit  could  be  counted 
otherwise  than  in  pennies,  some  special  need  had 
always  swept  it  into  the  family  treasury.  Teddy 
had  let  it  go  without  a  sigh.  He  would  have  let 
it  go  without  a  sigh  to-day,  only  that  he  had 
nothing  saved.  Being  naturally  of  a  loving,  care- 
taking  disposition,  it  meant  more  to  him  that 
Gussie  or  Gladys  should  have  a  new  pair  of  shoes 
than  that  he  should  be  able  to  emulate  Fred 
Inglis  in  ordering  a  suit  at  Love's. 

Having  left  the  kitchen,  he  did  not  go  farther 
than  the  living  room,  where,  Gussie  having 
taken  herself  upstairs,  Gladys  was  drying  her 
eyes.  He  merely  walked  to  the  end  of  the  room, 

98 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

his  hands  in  his  pockets,  as  he  stared  above  one 
of  the  hydrangea  trees  into  Indiana  Avenue. 
The  windows  being  open,  the  voices  of  playing 
children  mingled  with  the  even-song  of  birds. 
To  Teddy,  there  was  mockery  in  these  cheerful 
sounds.  There  was  mockery  in  the  westering 
May  sunshine,  mockery  in  the  groups  of  girls, 
bareheaded  and  arm  in  arm,  as  they  strolled 
toward  Palisade  Walk;  mockery  in  the  ruddy- 
faced  men  who  watered  their  shrubs  and  grass; 
mockery  in  the  aproned  women  who  came  to 
windows  or  doors  in  the  intervals  of  preparing 
supper.  It  all  spoke  of  a  homey  comfort  and 
content,  with  no  bluff  behind  it.  In  the  Follett 
house  all  was  bluff — and  misery. 

Somehow,  for  reasons  he  couldn't  fathom,  the 
cutting  off  of  the  gas  from  the  range  seemed  the 
last  humiliation.  In  the  matter  of  food,  if  one 
thing  was  too  dear,  you  could  eat  another.  So 
it  was  in  the  whole  round  of  essentials  in  living. 
You  could  get  a  substitute  or  you  could  go  with- 
out. But  for  heat  there  was  no  substitute,  and 
you  couldn't  go  without  it.  It  ranked  with 
clothes  and  shelter  as  a  necessity  even  among 
savages.  And  yet  here  they  were,  a  civilized 
family,  living  in  a  civilized  house,  in  a  suburb 
of  New  York,  deprived  of  what  even  Micmacs 
could  have  at  will.  It  was  one  of  the  happen- 
ings that  could  never  have  been  foreseen  as 
possibilities. 

His  hands  being  in  his  pockets,  Teddy  fingered 
the  twenty-dollar  bill.  He  did  this  uncon- 

99 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

sciously,  merely  because  it  was  there.  It  did 
occur  to  him  to  wish  it  was  his  own;  but  his 
wishes  went  no  farther. 

They  had  gone  no  farther  when  he  swung  on 
his  heel  to  go  back  to  the  kitchen.  He  must  tell 
his  mother  that  he  didn't  have  fifteen  dollars  put 
away.  He  hadn't  done  so  at  once  merely  because 
his  emotions  had  been  too  strong  for  him. 

He  pulled  his  burly  figure  down  the  length  of 
the  room  as  one  who  has  to  drag  himself  along. 
If  he  had  only  been  Fred  Inglis,  he  would  have 
handed  his  mother  a  sheaf  of  bills  with  instruc- 
tions to  buy  all  she  wanted.  Why  couldn't  he, 
Teddy  Follett,  do  the  same  ?  He  was,  as  Gussie 
phrased  it,  a  great  big  fellow  of  twenty-one — 
and  his  value  was  only  eighteen  per.  He  had 
proved  that  to  his  own  satisfaction,  for  in  se- 
cretly trying  to  unearth  a  better  place  he  had 
been  offered  less  than  he  got  at  Collingham  & 
Law's. 

What  were  the  shackles  that  bound  him? 
Were  they  of  his  own  creation,  or  were  they 
forced  on  him  by  the  world  outside?  He  was  as 
industrious  as  his  father  had  been,  and,  except 
for  a  tendency  to  do  his  work  with  a  broad  grin, 
just  as  wholehearted.  If  good  intentions  had 
commercial  value,  both  father  and  son  should 
have  been  rated  high;  but  here  was  his  father 
a  bit  of  old  junk,  while  he  himself,  having 
reached  man's  estate,  having  served  his  country, 
having  tacitly  offered  himself  to  the  limit  of  his 
strength,  was  rewarded  with  a  wage  on  which  he 

100 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

could  hardly  live,  to  say  nothing  of  helping 
others  live. 

Madly,  wildly,  these  thoughts  churned  in  his 
mind  as  he  lurched  down  the  room  toward  the 
kitchen,  while  Pansy  watched  him  with  a  look 
into  which  she  was  putting  all  her  soul. 

He  knew  what  he  would  say.  He  would  say: 
"Ma,  it's  no  go.  I  haven't  a  red  cent.  We've 
got  to  eat  cold  and  wash  cold  till  Saturday,  any- 
how. We'll  not  look  farther  ahead  than  that. 
When  Saturday  comes,  we'll  see." 

But,  on  the  threshold  of  the  kitchen,  he  saw 
something  which  brought  a  new  sensation.  In 
free  fights  while  in  the  navy  he  had  thought  he 
had  seen  red;  but  he  had  never  seen  red  like  this. 
He  had  never  supposed  it  possible  that  this  tor- 
rent of  wrath,  tenderness,  and  pity  should  rise 
within  himself,  a  fountain  spouting  at  the  same 
time  both  sweet  water  and  bitter. 

His  mother  was  seated  at  the  table,  crying. 
The  ham  bone  was  before  her,  the  rags  of  meat 
on  the  plate,  and  the  knife  on  top  of  them.  But 
she,  like  Gladys  a  few  minutes  previously,  had 
covered  her  face  with  her  hands,  while  her 
shoulders  rocked. 

In  all  his  twenty-one  years  Teddy  had  never 
seen  his  mother  cry.  He  had  cried;  the  girls 
had  cried;  his  father  had  very  nearly  cried;  but 
his  mother  never.  The  strong  spirit  had  grieved 
in  strong  ways,  but  not  in  this  way.  Now  it 
seemed  as  if  all  the  griefs  she  had  laid  up  since 
the  days  when  she  was  Lizzie  Scarborough  had 

101 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

heaped  themselves  to  the  point  at  which  these 
strange,  harsh,  unnatural  tears  were  their  only 
assuagement. 

Teddy  was  down  on  his  knees  beside  her,  his 
arm  flung  round  her  neck. 

"Ma!  Good  old  ma!  Dear  old  ma!  Don't 
cry!  For  God's  sake  don't  cry!  Stop  crying, 
ma!"  he  shouted,  in  an  imploring  passion  as 
strange,  harsh,  and  unnatural  as  her  own. 
"Here's  the  money  I  had  saved  for  my  new 
clothes.  Take  it  and  go  and  pay  something  on 
the  gas  bill.  There!  There!  Stop!  For  God's 
sake!  For  your  little  boy's  sake!  I  love  you, 
ma.  Only  stop!  There!  That's  better!  Calm 
down,  ma!  Everything  will  be  all  right,  and  I'll 
— I'll  get  the  new  clothes  by  and  by." 

But  in  his  heart  he  was  saying,  "To  hell  with 
Collingham  &  Law's!"  as  he  laid  the  bill  before 
her. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

JENNIE  cried  herself  to  sleep  that  Wednesday 
night,  and,  in  the  morning,  cried  herself 
awake.  She  was  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  motive  of 
her  tears;  she  was  sorry  for  having  put  a  gulf 
between  her  and  the  man  she  loved  by  marrying 
one  she  didn't  care  for. 

Why  she  didn't  care  for  him  was  beyond  her 
power  of  analysis.  He  was  good  and  kind  and 
tender;  he  was  rocklike  and  steady  and  strong. 
In  a  forceful  way  he  was  almost  handsome,  and 
some  day  he  would  be  rich.  But  there  was  the 
fact  that,  her  heart  being  given  to  the  one  man, 
her  nerves  shuddered  at  the  other.  The  explana- 
tion she  used  to  give,  that  the  lividness  of  the 
scar  on  his  forehead  frightened  her,  was  no  longer 
tenable,  since  the  mark  tended  to  fade  out.  The 
other  infirmity,  his  limp,  was  also  less  conspicu- 
ous, for,  though  he  would  never  walk  as  if  his 
foot  had  not  been  crushed,  he  walked  as  well  as 
many  other  men.  It  wasn't  these  peculiarities; 
it  wasn't  any  one  thing  in  itself;  it  was  simply 
that  she  didn't  love  him  and  never  would. 

Whereas,  she  did  love  another  man.    She  loved 

his  violet  eyes,  his  brown  mustache,  his  flashing 

teeth,  his  selfishness,  his  cruelty.     She  loved  his 

system  of  starving  her  out,  his  habit  of  keeping 

8  103 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

her  in  anguish.  Too  much  reasonableness  was 
hard  for  her  to  assimilate,  like  too  much  water 
to  a  portulaca. 

And  Bob  had  been  so  reasonable.  He  had 
tried  to  explain  himself.  He  had  used  words 
that  scared,  that  shocked  her.  Polygamous! 
Monogamous!  The  very  sounds  suggested  an- 
atomy or  impropriety. 

Nevertheless,  she  could  have  pardoned  this 
language  as  an  eccentricity  if,  in  the  dimness  of 
the  parson's  hall,  he  hadn't  taken  her  in  his  arms 
and  kissed  her.  This  possibility  was  something 
she  forgot  when  she  followed  him  up  the  rectory's 
brownstone  steps.  For  the  inadvertence  she 
blamed  herself  the  more,  since,  throughout  the 
winter,  she  had  never  once  lost  sight  of*  it. 
Whenever  he  had  proposed  to  her,  the  advantages 
of  marrying  so  much  money  had  been  offset  by 
her  terror  at  his  "pawing  her  about."  With  no 
high-flown  ideas  as  to  virtue,  Jennie  would  have 
fought  like  a  wildcat  for  her  virginity  of  mind 
and  body  till  ready  of  her  own  free  will  to  give 
them  up.  And  here  she  had  sold  herself  to  Bob 
Collingham,  a  man  whose  touch  made  her 
shrink. 

"I  can't  live  with  you!"  she  had  cried,  as  she 
tore  herself  from  his  embrace. 

And  poor  Bob  had  been  reasonable  again. 

"Of  course  not,  Jennie  darling — not  yet. 
When  I  come  back — " 

She  hadn't  let  him  finish.  She  had  dashed 
through  the  door  and  down  the  steps,  so  that  he 

104 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

had  some  ado  to  keep  up  with  her. .  .  .  Even  then, 
if  he  had  only  dragged  her  away  and  been  a 
cave  man.  .  .  . 

And  the  evening  at  home  had  been  one  of  the 
oddest  she  had  ever  spent  under  her  father's  roof. 
Everyone  was  so  queer — or  else  she  was  queer 
herself.  Gussie  and  Gladys,  reconciled  after  their 
squabble,  had  both  been  in  high  spirits,  and 
Teddy  almost  hysterical.  He  gave  imitations  of 
the  men  with  whom  he  worked  most  closely  at  the 
bank,  of  Fred  Inglis,  of  Mrs.  Inglis,  of  Dolly, 
Addie,  and  Sadie  Inglis,  which  made  everyone 
feel  that  a  great  actor  was  being  lost  to  the 
stage;  but  on  top  of  these  exhibitions  he  would 
fall  into  spells  of  profound  reverie.  The  father 
had  been  apathetic,  but  he  was  always  apa- 
thetic now;  the  mother,  on  the  other  hand,  more 
serene  than  usual.  More  than  usual,  too,  her 
eyes  applauded  Teddy's  high  spirits  with  a 
quiet,  adoring  smile.  Altogether,  the  supper 
had  been  a  merry  one,  and  yet,  to  Jennie's  think- 
ing, merry  with  a  mysterious  note  in  the  merri- 
ment— a  note  which  perhaps  only  Pansy's  intu- 
itions could  have  really  understood. 

But  sitting  on  the  edge  of  her  bed  in  the 
morning,  she  saw  a  ray  of  hope.  There  was 
divorce.  Marriage  wasn't  the  irreparable  thing 
which  their  family  traditions  assumed  it  to  be. 
As  a  tolerably  diligent  reader  of  the  personal 
items  in  the  papers,  Jennie  had  more  than  once 
read  of  divorces  granted  to  young  couples  who 
had  parted  at  the  church  door.  Naturally,  she 

105 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

shrank  from  the  fuss  it  would  involve,  but  better 
the  fuss  than.  .  .  . 

Having  got  up,  for  the  reason  that  she  couldn't 
stay  in  bed,  she  dressed  slowly,  because  none  of 
the  family  was  as  yet  astir.  She  would  surprise 
her  mother  by  lighting  the  gas  range  and  making 
the  coffee  before  anyone  came  down.  Thus  it 
happened  that  she  saw  the  postman  crossing  the 
street  with  a  letter  in  his  hand.  Though  letters 
were  not  rare  in  the  family,  they  were  rare  enough 
to  make  the  arrival  of  one  an  incident.  She  went 
to  the  door  to  take  it  from  the  postman's  hand. 
Seeing  it  addressed  to  Miss  Follett  and  bearing 
the  postmark  "Marillo,"  her  knees  trembled 
under  her. 

Having  read  what  Mrs.  Collingham  had 
written,  Jennie's  first  thought  was  that  her  early 
rising  enabled  her  to  keep  this  missive  secret. 
What  it  could  portend  was  beyond  her  surmise. 
It  was  not  unfriendly,  but  neither  was  it  cordial. 
It  took  the  guarded  tone,  she  thought,  of  a 
woman  who  meant  to  see  her  face  to  face  before 
being  willing  to  commit  herself.  As  success  on 
meeting  people  face  to  face  had  mostly  been 
Jennie's  portion,  she  was  not  so  much  afraid  of 
the  test  as  of  what  it  might  bring  afterward. 

What  it  might  bring  afterward  was  the  recog- 
nition of  her  marriage  and  her  translation  into 
a  rich  family.  This  would  mean  the  end  of  her 
father's  and  mother's  material  cares,  Teddy's 
advancement  at  the  bank,  and  brilliant  careers 
for  Gussie  and  Gladys  in  New  York  social  life. 

106 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Jennie  could  think  of  at  least  half  a  dozen 
picture  plays  in  which  the  sacrifice  of  some 
lovely,  virtuous  girl  had  done  as  much  as  this 
for  her  relatives. 

So,  all  that  day,  sacrifice  was  much  in  her 
mind.  Against  a  vague  background  of  grandeur, 
it  had  the  same  emotional  effect  as  of  passion 
sung  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  great  orchestra. 
To  see  herself  with  a  limousine  at  her  command, 
and  the  family  established  in  a  modest  villa 
somewhere  near  Marillo  Park,  if  not  quite  within 
it,  enabled  her  mentally  to  face  another  embrace 
from  Bob  in  the  spirit  of  an  early-Christian 
maiden  thinking  of  the  lions  awaiting  her  in  the 
arena.  It  would  be  terrible — but  it  could  be  met. 

The  vision  of  the  limousine  at  her  command 
seemed  to  have  come  partly  true  as  a  trim 
chauffeur  stepped  up  to  her  in  the  station  at 
Marillo,  touching  his  cap  and  asking  if  he  spoke 
to  Miss  Follett.  He  touched  his  cap  again  when 
he  closed  the  door  on  her,  and  the  car  tooled 
away  along  a  road  which  bore  the  same  relation 
to  the  roads  with  which  Jennie  was  familiar  as  a 
glorified  spirit  to  a  living  man. 

The  park  was  not  so  much  a  park  as  it  was  a 
country.  It  had  hills,  valleys,  landscapes,  lakes, 
and  what  seemed  to  Jennie  immense  estates  for 
which  there  was  plenty  of  room.  There  were 
houses  as  big  as  hotels  and  much  more  beautiful. 
Trees,  flowers,  lawns,  terraces,  fountains,  tennis 
courts,  dogs,  horses,  and  motor  cars  were  as 
silver  in  the  building  of  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem 

107 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

— nothing  accounted  of.  Jennie  had  seen  high 
life  as  lived  by  the  motion-picture  heroine,  but 
she  had  not  believed  that  even  wealth  could  buy 
such  a  Garden  of  Eden  as  this.  Expecting  to 
reach  Collingham  Lodge  a  few  minutes  after 
passing  the  grille,  she  had  gone  on  and  on,  over 
roads  that  branched,  and  then  branched,  and 
then  branched  again,  like  the  veinings  of  a  leaf. 

After  descending  at  the  white-columned  por- 
tico, she  went  up  the  steps  in  a  state  bordering 
on  trance.  She  knew  what  to  do  much  as  Elijah, 
having  come  by  the  chariot  of  fire  to  another 
plane  of  life,  must  have  known  what  to  do  when 
required  to  get  out  and  go  onward.  Since  a  man 
in  livery  opened  a  door  of  wrought-iron  tracery 
over  glass,  she  had  no  choice  but  to  pass  through. 

It  is  possible  that  Max,  by  his  supersenses, 
knew  that  she  belonged  to  his  master,  for,  spring- 
ing toward  her,  he  nosed  her  hand.  It  was,  as 
she  put  it  to  herself,  the  only  human  touch  in 
the  first  stages  of  her  welcome.  Thenceforward, 
during  all  the  forty  or  fifty  minutes  of  her  stay, 
he  kept  close  to  her,  either  on  foot  or  crouched 
beside  her  chair,  till  a  curious  thing  happened 
when  she  regained  the  car. 

I  have  said  in  the  first  stages  of  her  welcome, 
for  as  soon  as  she  entered  the  hall  she  heard  a 
cheery  voice. 

"Oh,  so  it's  you,  Miss  Follett!  So  glad  you've 
come.  It's  really  too  bad  to  bring  you  so  far — 
only,  it  seemed  to  me  we  might  be  cozier  here 
than  if  I  went  up  to  town." 

108 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

Adown  the  golden  space  which  seemed  to 
Jennie  much  too  majestic  for  anyone's  private 
dwelling,  a  brisk  figure  moved,  with  hand  out- 
stretched. A  few  seconds  later  Jennie  was 
looking  into  eyes  such  as  she  didn't  suppose 
existed  in  human  faces.  Beauty,  dignity,  poise, 
white  hair  dressed  to  perfection,  and  clothes 
such  as  Jennie  had  never  seen  off  the  stage — 
and  rarely  on  it — were  all  subordinated  to  a 
hearty,  kindly,  womanly  greeting  before  which 
they  sank  out  of  sight.  Overpowered  as  she  was 
by  the  material  costliness  of  all  she  saw,  the  girl 
was  well-nigh  crushed  by  this  unaffected  affa- 
bility. Like  the  Queen  of  Sheba  at  the  court  of 
Solomon,  to  be  Scriptural  again,  there  was  no 
more  spirit  left  in  her. 

Mrs.  Collingham  went  on  talking  as,  side  by 
side,  they  walked  slowly  up  the  strip  of  red 
carpet  into  the  cool  recesses  of  the  house. 

"I  hope  you  didn't  find  the  train  too  stuffy. 
It's  too  bad  they  won't  give  us  a  parlor  car  on 
the  locals.  For  the  last  three  or  four  years  we 
only  have  a  parlor  car  on  what  they  call  the 
'husbands'  trains' — one  in  the  morning  and  one 
in  the  afternoon,  and,  my  dear,  they  make  us  pay 
for  it  as  if — " 

A  toss  of  the  hands  proved  to  Jennie  that  Mrs. 
Collingham  knew  the  difference  between  cheap 
and  dear,  which  again  took  her  by  surprise. 

They  passed  through  the  terrace  drawing- 
room,  which  Jennie  couldn't  notice  because  she 
trod  on  air,  and  came  out  to  the  flagged  pave- 

109 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ment.  Even  here,  Mrs.  Collingham  didn't 
pause,  but,  leading  the  way  to  the  end  of  it,  she 
went  round  a  comer  to  the  northern  and  more 
private  side  of  the  house,  which  looked  into  a 
little  wood. 

"Mr.  Collingham's  at  home — just  driven 
down — but  I'm  not  going  to  have  him  here. 
Men  are  such  a  nuisance  when  women  talk 
about  intimate  things,  don't  you  think?  They 
make  such  mountains  of  molehills.  It's  just  as 
when  you  have  a  cry.  They  think  your  heart 
must  be  breaking,  and  never  seem  to  understand 
that  it  gives  you  some  relief." 

Jennie  was  still  more  astounded.  That  the 
mistress  of  Collingham  Lodge,  a  great  figure  in 
Marillo  Park,  and  therefore  high  up  in  the  peer- 
age of  the  United  States,  could  have  the  same 
feelings  as  herself  seemed  the  touch  of  nature 
that  makes  the  whole  world  kin  to  a  degree  she 
had  put  beyond  the  limits  of  the  human  heart. 

They  came  to  a  construction  like  a  giant  bird- 
cage— a  room  out  of  doors,  yet  sheltered  from 
noisome  insects  like  their  own  screened  piazza, 
furnished  with  an  outdoor-indoor  luxury. 

"We  don't  have  many  mosquitoes  at  Marillo," 
Mrs.  Collingham  explained,  as  she  led  the  way 
in,  "but  in  spring  they  can  be  troublesome. 
So  we'll  have  our  tea  here.  Gossip  will  bring  it 
presently.  Where  will  you  sit?  I  think  you'll 
like  that  chair.  There!  What  about  a  cushion? 
Oh,  I'm  sure  you  don't  need  it  at  your  age,  but, 
still,  one  likes  to  be  comfortable.  No,  Max; 

no 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

stay  out.  Well,  if  you  must  come  in,  come  in. 
He  seems  to  like  you,"  she  chatted  on.  "He's 
Bob's  dog,  and  I  suppose  he  takes  to  Bob's 
friends." 

Rendered  speechless  by  this  frank  reference 
to  the  man  who  was  the  bond  between  them, 
there  was,  fortunately,  no  immediate  need  for 
Jennie  to  speak,  since  Gossip  appeared  in  the 
doorway  pushing  the  tea  equipage.  It  was  a 
little  table  on  wheels,  and  on  it  Jennie  noticed, 
in  a  general  way,  every  magnificent  detail — the 
silver  tray,  the  silver  kettle,  the  silver  teapot, 
the  silver  tongs,  the  silver  spoons.  "And  all  of 
them  solid,"  she  said  to  herself,  awesomely. 
She  regretted  that  she  wouldn't  be  at  liberty  to 
recount  these  marvels  at  home.  At  home,  they 
thought  her  merely  at  the  studio,  while  she  had 
been  borne  away  through  the  air  as  by  a  witch 
on  a  broomstick. 

Jennie  would  have  said  that  Mrs.  Collingham 
had  hardly  looked  at  her,  but  then,  she  reflected, 
every  woman  knew  how  little  looking  you  had 
to  do  to  grasp  the  details  of  another  woman's 
personality.  You  took  them  all  in  at  a  glance, 
as  if  you  brought  seven  or  eight  senses  into  play. 
Each  time  her  hostess,  now  settled  behind  the 
tea  table,  lifted  her  fine  eyes,  Jennie  was  sure 
they  "got"  her,  like  a  camera. 

"You  pose,  don't  you?"  The  words  came  out 
in  a  casual,  friendly  tone,  as  she  busied  herself 
with  the  spirit  lamp.  "That  must  be  so  in- 
teresting. I  often  wonder,  when  I'm  in  the  big 

in 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

galleries,  what  the  immortal  women  would  have 
said  had  they  known  how  their  features  would 
go  down  through  the  ages.  Take  Dorotea 
Nachtigal,  for  instance,  the  original  of  Holbein's 
'Meyer  Madonna/  in  Darmstadt — the  most 
wonderful  of  all  the  Madonnas,  I  always  say— 
and  how  queer  I  suppose  she  would  have  felt  if 
she'd  known  that  we  should  be  adoring  her  when 
she's  no  more  than  a  handful  of  dust.  Or  the 
model  who  posed  for  the  Madonna  di  San  Sisto! 
Or  the  young  things  who  sat  to  Greuze !  Did  you 
ever  think  of  them  ? " 

Jennie  saw  how  Bob  could  have  come  by  words 
like  "polygamous"  and  "monogamous."  People 
at  Marillo  Park  spoke  a  language  of  their  own — 
"English  with  frills  on  it,"  was  the  way  she  put 
it  to  herself.  From  the  intonation,  she  was  able 
to  frame  her  answer  in  the  negative,  while,  once 
more,  the  superb  eyes,  which  were  oddly  like  Bob's 
little  steely  ones,  were  lifted  on  her  with  a  smile. 

"You  know,  I  should  think  people  would  be 
crazy  to  paint  you.  How  do  you  like  your  tea  ? 
Sugar?  Cream?  One  lump?  Two  lumps?" 
Having  flung  out  answers  at  random,  Jennie 
leaned  forward  to  take  her  cup,  while  the  kindly 
voice  ran  on:  "Just  as  you  sit  there  you're  a 
picture.  Funny  I  should  have  given  you  a  tan- 
colored  cushion,  because  it  tones  in  exactly." 

Jennie  explained  that  the  various  shades  of 
brown  and  some  of  the  deeper  ones  of  red  were 
among  her  favorites. 

"  Because  they  go  so  well  with  your  hair,"  her 
112 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

hostess  said,  comprehendingly,  and  studying  her 
now  more  frankly.  "My  dear,  you've  got  the 
most  lovely  hair!  It  isn't  auburn;  it  isn't  cop- 
pery; it  isn't  red.  It's — what  is  it?  Oh,  I  see! 
It's  amber — it's  the  extraordinary  shade  Romney 
gets  into  some  of  his  portraits  of  Lady  Hamil- 
ton. You  see  it  in  the  one  in  the  Frick  gallery, 
if  I  remember  rightly.  You  must  look  the  next 
time  you're  there." 

Jennie  tried  to  stammer  that  she  would,  only 
that  her  syllables  ran  into  one  another  and  be- 
came incoherent. 

"But  Romney  couldn't  paint  you,"  Mrs. 
Collingham  declared,  enthusiastically,  putting 
her  cup  to  her  lips.  "He's  too  Georgian.  You're 
the  twentieth  century.  You're  the  perfect  spirit 
of  the  age — restless,  rebellious,  wistful,  and  deli- 
cate all  at  once.  Girls  nowadays  remind  me  of 
exquisite  fragile  things  like  the  spire  of  the 
Sainte  Chapelle,  only  built  of  steel.  You've  got 
the  steel  look — all  slender  and  unbendable. 
It's  curious  that — the  way  women  look  like  the 
ages  in  which  they're  born.  You've  only  to  go 
through  a  portrait  collection  to  see  that  it's  so. 
Take  the  Stuart  women,  for  instance — the  Van- 
dyke and  Lely  women — great  saucer-eyed  things, 
with  sensual  lips  and  breasts.  And  then  the  Hol- 
bein women,  so  terribly  got  up  in  their  stiff 
Sunday  clothes,  which  they  must  have  hurried 
to  put  into  their  cedar  chests  the  minute  they 
got  home  from  mass.  But  they  belong  to  their 
time,  don't  you  think?" 

"3 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Jennie  could  only  say  she  did  think,  vowing  in 
her  heart  that  the  next  day  would  see  her  going 
round  the  Metropolitan  Museum  with  a  cata- 
logue. 

"But  you!  Hubert  Wray  says  he's  done  a 
wonderful  study  of  you,  and  I'm  crazy  to  see  it. 
The  only  thing  I  don't  like  from  his  description 
is  that  he's  got  you  in  a  Greek  dress  and  atti- 
tude, and  7  think,  now  that  I've  seen  you,  that 
the  day  after  to-morrow  is  your  style.  What  do 
you  say  yourself?" 

"I  don't  know  about  the  day  after  to-morrow; 
I'm  so  busy  with  to-day." 

Mrs.  Collingham  took  this  with  a  pleasant 
little  laugh. 

"You  clever  thing!  You  won't  give  yourself 
away."  She  mused  a  few  seconds,  a  smile  on  her 
lips,  and  then  said,  with  a  sudden  lifting  of  the 
eyes,  "What  do  you  think  of  Bob?" 

The  girl  could  only  stammer: 

"Think  of  him — in  what  way?" 

"Do  you  think  he  looks  like  me?" 

In  this  rapid,  unexpected  shifting  of  the 
ground,  Jennie  was  like  a  giddy  person  trying  to 
keep  her  head. 

"Well,  yes — in  a  way;    only — " 

Mrs.  Collingham  laughed  again. 

"I  see  that,  too.  He  does.  I  can't  deny  it. 
Often  when  I  look  at  him,  I  see  myself,  only — 
you'll  laugh,  I  know — only  myself  as  I'd  be 
reflected  in  the  back  of  a  silver  spoon.  That's 
the  trouble  with  Bob — he's  so  unformed.  You 

114 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

must  have  noticed  it.  I  suppose  it's  the  war; 
and  yet  I  don't  know.  He's  always  been  like 
that — a  dear  fellow,  but  no  more  than  half 
grown.  I  dare  say  that  by  the  time  he's  fifty 
he'll  be  something  like  a  man." 

As  there  seemed  to  be  no  absolute  need  for  a 
response  to  this,  Jennie  waited  for  more.  It 
came,  after  another  little  spell  of  musing. 

"He's  talked  to  me  so  much  about  you  all 
through  the  winter.  That's  why  I  asked  you  to 
come  down.  Mr.  Collingham  and  I  feel  so  tre- 
mendously indebted  to  you  for  the  way  you've 
acted." 

Jennie  could  only  repeat  feebly,  "The  way 
I've  acted?" 

"I  mean  the  way  you've  understood  him. 
Almost  any  other  girl — yes,  girls  right  here  in 
Marillo  Park — would  have  taken  him  at  his 
word."  Jennie's  lips  were  parted,  but  unable  to 
frame  a  question.  Mrs.  Collingham  eyed  the 
spirit  lamp.  "All  the  same,  that  doesn't  excuse 
him.  Even  a  fellow  who  isn't  half  grown  should 
have  more  sense  than  to  make  love  to  every  girl 
he  spends  an  hour  with.  One  of  these  days,  some 
girl  will  catch  him,  and  then  he'll  be  sorry. 
That's  why  we've  been  so  thankful  for  the  kind 
of  influence  you've  had  over  him,  and  why  my 
husband  and  I  thought  we'd  like  to  do  something 
— well,  something  a  little  audacious." 

Jennie  was  twisting  her  fingers  and  untwisting 
them,  but  luckily  her  hostess,  by  keeping  her 
eyes  on  the  spirit  lamp,  didn't  nonce  this  sign 

US 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  nervousness.  Once  more  she  spoke,  with  a 
musing  half  smile. 

"We — we  see  a  good  deal  of  some  one  else 
who  keeps  talking  about  you;  and — you  won't 
mind,  will  you? — of  course  we've  drawn  our 
conclusions.  We  couldn't  help  that — could  we? 
— when  they  were  staring  us  in  the  face." 

"Do  you  mean  Mr.  Wray?"  Jennie  asked, 
with  the  point-blank  helplessness  of  one  who 
doesn't  know  how  to  hedge. 

"Oh,  I  didn't  use  the  name,  now  did  I?  And, 
as  I've  said,  what  we've  seen  we've  seen,  and  we 
couldn't  help  it.  But,  of  course,  if  it  hadn't  been 
for  Bob,  we  shouldn't  have  seen  so  quickly." 

"But  he  doesn't  know?"  Jennie  cried,  more  as 
query  than  as  affirmation. 

"No;  I  suppose  he  doesn't.  I  only  mean  that 
as  you  refused  Bob  so  many  times — he  told  me 
that — we  naturally  thought  there  must  be  some 
one  else,  and  when  everything  pointed  that  way 
and  Hubert  talked  of  you  so  much — "  She 
kept  this  line  of  reasoning  suspended  while  once 
more  she  shifted  her  ground  suddenly.  "I 
wonder  if  you've  ever  realized  how  hard  it  is  to 
show  your  gratitude  toward  people  to  whom  you 
truly  and  deeply  feel  grateful?" 

Jennie  mumbled  something  to  the  effect  that 
she  had  never  been  in  that  situation. 

"Well,  it  is  a  situation.  People  are  so  queer 
and  proud  and  difficile.  I  suppose  it's  we  older 
people  who  run  up  oftenest  against  that;  but  if 
Mr.  Collingham  and  I  could  only  do  for  people 

116 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

the  things  we  might  do,  and  which  they  won't 
let  us  do — " 

Once  more  the  idea  was  suspended  to  give 
Jennie  time  to  take  in  the  fact  that  a  good  thing 
was  coming  her  way;  but  all  she  could  manage 
was  to  stare  with  frightened,  fascinated  eyes  and 
no  power  of  thought. 

"Do  you  know,  my  dear,"  the  artless  voice 
ran  on,  "now  that  I'm  face  to  face  with  you,  I'm 
really  afraid?  I  told  my  husband  that,  if  he'd 
leave  us  alone  together,  I  shouldn't  be — and, 
after  all,  I  am."  She  leaned  forward  confiden- 
tially. "How  frank  would  you  let  me  be?  How 
much  would  you  be  willing  for  me  to  say?" 

But  before  the  girl  could  invent  a  reply  the 
voice  kept  up  its  even,  caressing  measure. 

"/  know  how  things  are  with  you — at  least,  I 
think  I  do.  I've  been  young,  my  dear.  I  know 
what  it  is  to  be  in  love.  You're  coloring,  but  you 
needn't  do  it — not  with  me.  You're  very  much 
in  love,  aren't  you?" 

Jennie  bowed  her  head  to  hide  her  tears.  She 
hadn't  meant  to  admit  how  much  in  love  she 
was,  but  this  sympathy  unnerved  her. 

"You  do  love  Hubert,  don't  you?" 

"Yes,  but—" 

"And  that's  why  you  told  Bob  you  couldn't 
marry  him?" 

"That's  one  of  the  reasons,  but — ' 

"One  of  the  reasons  will  do,  my  dear.  You 
don't  know  how  much  I  feel  with  you  and  for 
you.  I  could  tell  you  a  little  story  about  myself 

117 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

when  I  was  your  age — but,  then,  old  love  tales 
are  like  dried  flowers,  they've  lost  their  scent 
and  color.  Mr.  Collingham  and  I  are  very  fond 
of  Hubert,  and,  of  course,  he  doesn't  make  enough 
to  marry  on  as  things  are  now.  He  has  a  little 
something,  I  suppose,  and,  with  the  work  he's 
doing,  the  future  is  secure.  You'll  find,  one  day, 
that  he'll  be  painting  you  as  Andrea  del  Sarto 
painted  Lucrezia,  and  Rembrandt  Saskia — their 
wives,  you  know — " 

"Oh,  but,  Mrs.  Collingham—" 

"There,  there,  my  dear!  I'm  not  going  to  say 
anything  more  about  that.  I  know  Hubert  and 
what  he  wants,  and  so  my  husband  and  I  thought 
that  if  we  could  show  our  gratitude  to  you  and 
make  things  easier  for  him — " 

"Oh,  but  you  couldn't!" 

"We  couldn't  unless  you  helped  us.  That  goes 
without  saying,  of  course.  But  we  hoped  you 
would.  You  see,  when  people  have  so  much — 
not  that  we're  so  tremendously  rich,  but  when 
they  have  enough — and  when  they  know  as  we 
do  what  struggle  is — and  there's  been  anyone 
whom  they  admire  as  we  admire  you,  after  all 
you've  done  for  Bob — we  thought  that  if  we 
could  give  you  a  little  present — a  wedding  present 
it  would  be — only  just  a  little  in  anticipation — 
we  thought  five  thousand  dollars — " 

She  ceased  suddenly  because  Jennie  appeared 
as  one  transfixed.  She  sat  erect;  but  the  life 
seemed  to  have  gone  out  of  her. 

Mrs.  Collingham  was  prepared  for  this;  she 
118 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

had  discounted  it  in  advance.  "She's  playing 
for  more,"  she  said  to  herself.  Luckily,  she  had 
named  her  minimum  only,  and  had  arranged 
with  her  husband  for  a  maximum.  The  maxi- 
mum was  all  the  same  to  her  so  long  as  she 
saved  Bob.  Having  given  Jennie  credit  for  seeing 
through  the  game  all  along — such  girls  were 
quick  and  astute — she  had  expected  that  the 
first  figure  of  the  "present"  would  meet  with 
just  this  reception. 

But  Jennie  was  saying  to  herself,  "Oh,  if  this 
kind  offer  had  only  come  yesterday!"  Five 
thousand  dollars  was  a  sum  of  which  she  could 
not  see  the  spending  limitations.  It  meant  all 
of  which  the  family  had  need  and  that  she  her- 
self had  ever  coveted.  With  five  thousand  dol- 
lars, she  could  not  only  have  put  her  father  on 
his  feet,  but  have  come  before  Hubert  as  an 
heiress. 

"If  you  don't  think  it  enough,"  Mrs.  Colling- 
ham  said,  at  last,  with  a  shade  of  coldness  in  her 
tone,  "I  should  be  willing  to  make  it  seven — or 
ten.  Perhaps  we'd  better  say  ten  at  once,  and 
end  the  discussion.  My  husband's  willing  to 
make  it  ten,  but  I  don't  think  he'd  give  more. 
Our  son  is  very  d^ar  to  us" — the  realities  seeped 
through  in  spite  of  her  attempts  at  comedy — 
"and,  oh,  Miss  Follett,  if  you'll  only  help  us  to 
keep  him  for  ourselves  as  you've  helped  us 
already — " 

Jennie  staggered  to  .her  feet.     Her  arms  hung 
lax  at  her  sides.    Ten  thousand  dollars!    The  sum 
9  "9 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

was  fabulous!  It  would  have  meant  all  cares 
lifted  from  the  home — and  Hubert!  She  was 
hardly  aware  of  speaking  as  she  said: 

"Oh,  Mrs.  Collingham,  I  can't  take  your 
money.  I  wish  I  could.  My  God!  how  I  wish  I 
could !  But — but — " 

"But,  for  goodness'  sake,  child,  why  can't 
you?" 

"Because — oh,  because — I'm  married  to  Bob 
already." 


CHAPTER  IX 

IT  was  one  of  those  occasions  when  the  auditory 
nerve  seems  to  connect  imperfectly  with  the 
brain.  Mrs.  Collingham  placed  her  cup  on  the 
table  and  leaned  forward,  puzzled,  tense. 

"What  did  you  say?  Sit  down.  Tell  me  that 
again." 

Jennie  collapsed  against  the  tan  cushion  of 
the  chair,  and  repeated  her  confession.  Her 
hostess's  brows  knitted  painfully. 

"But  I  don't  understand.  When  did  you 
marry  him?" 

The  girl  explained  that  it  had  been  on  the 
previous  afternoon. 

"But — but — you  said  just  now  that  you  were 
in  love  with  some  one  else." 

"So  I  am — only — only,  Bob  made  me." 

"Made  you  what?" 

"Made  me  go  and  get  a  license  and  marry 
him.  He  said" — her  lips  and  tongue  were  so 
parched  that  it  was  hard  to  form  the  words — 
"he  said  he  was  going  away  in  a  few  days  to 
South  America,  and  that  he  couldn't  go  unless 
he  knew  I  was  his  wife.  I  begged  him  to  let  me 
off,  but  he — he  wouldn't.  Oh,  Mrs.  Collingham, 
what  am  I  to  do?" 

The  appeal  helped  Junia  to  rally  her  stricken 
121 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

powers.  It  enabled  her  to  say  inwardly:  "I 
must  act  through  this  girl  herself.  If  I  estrange 
her,  I  may  lose  my  son."  A  flash  of  the  lioness 
wrath  with  which  she  trembled  might  lead  to  an 
irretrievably  false  step.  So  she  made  her  tone 
kindly,  sympathetic,  almost  affectionate. 

"And  Bob — does  he  know  that — that  you  care 
for  some  one  else?" 

"He  never  asked  me." 

"But  don't  you  think  you  should  have  told 
him?" 

"That's  not  so  very  easy  when — " 

"But  there  was  some  sort  of  understanding 
between  you  and  Hubert,  wasn't  there?" 

Jennie's  only  answer  to  this  was  to  clasp  her 
hands  and  say, 

"Oh,  Mrs.  Collingham,  how  do  people  get 
divorces  ? " 

This  being  more  than  Junia  had  hoped  for,  she 
tried  to  use  the  opening  to  the  best  of  her  ability. 

"They — they  do  something  that — that  makes 
the  other  person  want  to  be  free."  Trying  to 
explain  this  further,  she  ran  the  risk  of  citing  a 
case  perhaps  too  close  to  the  point.  "For  in- 
stance, if  my  husband  wanted  to  be  free,  he'd  do 
something  that  would  make  me  willing  to  di- 
vorce him." 

"And  would  you?" 

"You  see,  I'm  taking  the  case  of  his  wanting 
to  be  free.  In  that  situation,  he's  the  one  who 
would  do  the  thing.  If  I  wanted  to  be  free,  I 
suppose — I  suppose  I  should  do  it." 

122 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"So  that  if  I  wanted  to  be  free,  it  would  be 
up  to  me  to  do  the  thing  rather  than  up  to 
Bob/' 

A  moral  issue  being  here  at  stake,  Junia  was 
obliged,  in  the  expressive  American  phrase,  "to 
sidestep,"  though  she  supposed  that  the  sug- 
gestion in  the  air  was  of  no  more  than  Jennie 
had  done  already.  As  an  artist's  model,  it  would 
be  part  of  her  professional  occupation. 

"I'm  not  giving  you  advice,  my  dear;  I'm 
only  trying  to  answer  your  question.  I'm  so 
sorry  for  you  that  I'd  do  anything  I  could  to 
help  you  unravel  the  tangle." 

"Then  you  think  there  are  ways  of  unraveling 
it?" 

"Oh,  certainly,  if  you  were  willing  to — " 

"To  what,  Mrs.  Collingham.  There's  almost 
nothing  I  wouldn't  do — to  get  us  all  out — when 
you've  been  so  kind  to  me." 

Having  a  conscience  of  her  own,  Junia  con- 
tinued to  "sidestep." 

"My  dear,  I  can't  tell  you  what  to  do.  I'm 
not  sure  that  I  know — very  well.  You  see,  it's 
your  trouble,  and  you  must  get  out  of  it.  I'll 
help  you.  I  will  do  that.  In  every  way  I  can 
I'll  make  it  easy  for  you.  But  I  couldn't  advise 
— or — or  put  anything  in  your  way  that  might 
be  considered  as — as  temptation." 

But  conscientious  scruples  were  not  in  Jennie's 
line.  When  eager  to  reach  a  point,  she  went  to 
it  straight. 

"If  Bob  came  back  from  South  America  and 
123 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

found  I  was  living  with  Hubert,  wouldn't  he  have 
to  divorce  me  then?" 

Junia  rose  in  the  agitation  of  one  unusued  to 
plain  talk,  and  shocked  by  it. 

"Jennie — your  name  is  Jennie,  isn't  it? — I 
must  go  and  speak  to  Mr.  Collingham.  You'll 
stay  here — won't  you  ? — till  I  come  back.  I  may 
have  something  then  rather  important  to  say." 

The  girl  sat  still,  looking  up  adoringly. 

"Are  you  going  to  tell  him?" 

"No;  I  think  not.  But  there's  something  I 
want  to  ask  him.  I  don't  think  that  either  you 
or  I  had  better  say  anything  to  anyone.  What  do 
you  think?" 

Jennie  shook  her  head. 

"I  don't  want  to.  I  wish  nobody  would  ever 
have  to  know." 

"I  wish  Hubert  didn't  have  to  know.  Perhaps 
he  won't;  and  yet —  Let  us  think."  She 
dropped  into  a  chair  nearer  to  Jennie  than  the 
one  behind  the  tea  table.  "One  thing  I  must 
ask  you.  What  happened  after  you  and  Bob 
went  through  that  ceremony  yesterday  after- 
noon?" 

"Nothing  happened.  He  motored  back  to  his 
friends  on  Long  Island  and  I  took  the  ferry  and 
went  home.  He  said  he'd  see  me  on  Saturday  to 
say  good-by." 

"Where?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  In  Central  Park,  I  expect. 
He's  asked  me  to  meet  him  there  once  or  twice 
already." 

124 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"But  I  wouldn't  go  anywhere  else  with  him 
if  I  were  you — not  into  a  house,  or  anything." 

"I  won't  if  he  doesn't  make  me." 

"I'd  be  firm  about  that.  You  see,  if  you  did 
— well,  I'm  sure  you  understand — it  might — it 
might  make  it  harder  for  you  to  find  your  way 
out  to  where  you'd  be  happy  again.  Are  you 
sure  you  see  what  I  mean?" 

"I've  had  that  out  with  him.  He'd  said  that 
nothing  would  happen  till  he  got  back  from 
South  America." 

Relieved  by  this  simple  statement,  Junia 
went  on. 

"And  if  I  were  you,  I  wouldn't  say  a  word  to 
anybody — not  even  to  your  own  father  and 
mother.  Your  mother  is  living,  isn't  she  ?  Don't 
even  tell  Bob  that  you've  seen  me.  Don't  tell 
anyone  anything.  Let  it  be  your  secret  and 
mine.  I  want  you  to  feel  that  I'm  your  friend 
and  anxious  to  help  you  out  of  the  muddle  in 
which  you've  tied  up  your  happiness.  At  first, 
when  you  told  me,  I  thought  more  of  Hubert; 
but  now  that  we've  talked  I'm  thinking  of  you, 
too,  and  how  much  I  should  like  to  see  you — " 
A  dim  smile  conveyed  the  rest  of  the  thought 
while  she  rose  again.  "Now  I'll  go.  Don't  be 
alarmed  if  I'm  a  little  long.  Max  will  take  care 
of  you." 

Left  to  herself,  Jennie's  emotions  came  in 
waves  of  conflicting  calculation.  Had  she  only 
been  in  love  with  Bob,  and  not  with  Hubert,  all 
this  graciousness  would  have  lapped  her  round 

125 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

in  silk  and  softness.  Nothing  would  have  been 
denied  her  from  a  limousine  to  pearls.  There 
would  have  been  the  villa  for  the  family,  with 
Gussie  and  Gladys  turned  into  "buds." 

But,  as  an  offset  to  it,  there  would  be  the  re- 
nunciation. Somehow,  since  cutting  herself 
away  from  Hubert  by  the  ceremony  with  Bob, 
he  seemed  nearer  to  her  than  before.  Things 
she  had  supposed  to  be  out  of  the  question  now 
presented  themselves  as  more  in  the  line  of  those 
that  could  be  done.  Within  twenty-four  hours 
she  had  lived  much;  she  had  ripened  much. 
Now  that  she  had  had  this  talk  with  Mrs.  Col- 
lingham,  Hubert  became  more  definitely  an 
alternative.  She  could  choose  him  and  let  this 
wealth  and  beauty  go,  or  she  could  choose  the 
wealth  and  beauty  and  let  him  .  .  . 

But  at  the  thought  of  turning  her  back  on 
him  something  seemed  to  choke  her.  To  choose 
what  money  could  buy  instead  of  this  great  love 
was  treachery  to  all  she  knew  as  sublime.  She 
clutched  herself  over  the  heart.  It  was  as  if  she 
were  going  to  die.  Max  was  so  startled  that  he 
sprang  upon  her  with  his  mighty  paws  in  the 
roughness  of  young  consternation. 

On  the  other  hand,  home  conditions  were  well- 
nigh  imperative.  Love  and  Hubert  were  all  very 
well,  but  they  were  part  of  the  world  of  romance. 
The  family,  with  their  concrete  needs,  were 
actuality.  Jennie  thought  of  each  one  of  them 
in  turn,  but  of  Teddy  most  of  all.  Among  those 
of  her  own  generation,  he  was  her  favorite.  If 

126 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

she  became  openly  Mrs.  Robert  Bradley  Colling- 
ham,  Junior,  of  Marillo  Park,  Teddy  would  go 
far.  He  might  have  a  place  like  Mr.  Brunt's. 
Only  the  other  day  her  father  had  said  of  Mr. 
Brunt,  "There's  one  who  don't  have  any  trouble 
in  pickling  down  his  ten  a  week."  To  see  Teddy 
pickling  down  his  ten  a  week,  which  would  be 
more  than  five  hundred  dollars  in  a  year,  Jennie 
was  ready  to  submit  to  almost  anything — even 
Bob's  hands  on  her  person.  She  might  get  used 
to  them,  and,  if  she  didn't,  why,  the  daily  sacri- 
fice would  be  not  without  its  reward. 

She  had  reached  something  like  this  decision 
when  Mrs.  Collingham  came  back.  Watching 
her  from  the  minute  when  she  rounded  the  corner 
of  the  flagged  pavement,  Jennie  noted  a  rapid 
change  in  her  expression.  At  first  it  was  terrible 
— that  of  a  queen  in  wrath.  As  she  approached 
the  bird  cage,  however,  it  cleared  so  quickly  that 
by  the  time  she  reached  the  threshold  it  was 
almost  tender. 

"That's  because  she  likes  me,"  Jennie  said  to 
herself.  She  was  accustomed  to  being  liked, 
though  especially  by  men.  "I  think  it  will  cheer 
her  up  if  I  say  right  off  that  I've  come  to  stay 
with  her." 

To  make  this  announcement  she  had  risen  to 
her  feet,  with  lips  already  parted;  but  Mrs. 
Collingham  forestalled  her. 

"Sit  down  again,  my  dear.  I  want  to  talk  to 
you  some  more.  I  must  tell  you  about  Mr.  Col- 
lingham." She  herself  sank  into  the  chair  near 

127 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Jennie  which  she  had  already  occupied.  She 
panted  as  after  a  difficult  experience.  "Oh  dear! 
It's  been  so  trying!  You  don't  know  him,  do 
you?  Well,  he's  a  good  man — kind  and  just  in 
his  way — but  oh,  so  stern  and  relentless!  If  he 
knew  what  Bob  had  done  in  going  through  that 
mad  thing  with  you,  he'd  turn  the  boy  adrift." 

Having  reseated  herself  already,  Jennie  now 
closed  her  lips.  She  had  forgotten  Mr.  Colling- 
ham.  Coming  to  stay  was  meeting  a  new 
obstacle. 

"  It's  only  fair  to  you  to  make  you  understand 
what  kind  of  man  my  husband  is.  Of  course, 
he's  a  strong  man,  otherwise  he  wouldn't  have 
accomplished  all  he  has.  My  son,  my  daughter, 
I  myself — we're  but  puppets  on  his  string.  His 
word  has  to  be  law  to  us.  And  with  Bob  the  way 
he  is — wanting  to  marry  every  girl  he  meets— 
and  forgetting  her  next  day — his  father  has  no 
patience.  You  don't  know  how  hard  it  is  for  me, 
my  dear,  always  to  have  to  stand  between  them." 

As  she  paused  to  dab  her  eyes,  Jennie  saw  the 
limousine,  the  villa,  with  Teddy's  chance  of 
pickling  down  ten  a  week,  fading  out  like  a 
picture  in  the  movies. 

"I  wouldn't  dare  to  tell  him  of  the  great  wrong 
Bob  has  done  to  you.  He'd  disinherit  him  on  the 
spot.  If  Bob  were  to  insist  on  having  this  es- 
capade— you  wouldn't  really  call  it  a  marriage, 
would  you  ? — but  if  he  were  to  insist  on  its  being 
made  public,  why,  there'd  be  an  end  of  his  rela- 
tions with  his  father.  My  husband  would  neither 

128 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

give  him  a  cent  nor  leave  him  a  cent.  I  must  say 
that  Bob  would  deserve  it;  but,  Jennie,  I'm 
thinking  of  you.  You'd  have  forsaken  the  man 
you  loved,  married  a  man  you  didn't  care  for, 
and  got  nothing  in  the  world  to  show  for  it. 
That's  where  you'd  have  to  suffer,  and  I  can  see 
well  enough  that  you're  suffering  already." 

There  was  every  reason  now  that  Jennie's 
tears  should  begin  to  flow.  Flow  they  did  while 
her  companion  watched. 

"And  yet,  as  you'll  see,  Mr.  Collingham  is  not 
an  unkind  man.  When  I  explained  to  him  that 
we  might  be  more  indebted  to  you  than  I  had 
thought  at  first,  he  said — " 

With  a  look  of  anticipation,  Jennie  stopped 
crying  suddenly,  though  the  tears  already  shed 
were  glistening  on  her  cheek. 

The  point  was  now  to  find  phraseology  at 
once  clear  enough  and  delicate  enough  to  suggest 
a  course  and  yet  not  shock  the  sensibilities. 

"You  see,  my  dear,  it's  this  way.  One  has  to 
keep  one's  ideals,  hasn't  one?  That  goes  without 
saying.  Once  we  let  our  ideals  go" —  she  flung 
her  hands  outward —  "well,  what's  the  use  of 
living?  My  own  life  hasn't  been  as  happy  as 
you  might  think;  and  if  it  hadn't  been  for  my 
ideals—'3 

Jennie  broke  in  because  she  couldn't  help  it. 

"Mr.  Wray  is  ideal  for  a  man,  don't  you  think, 
Mrs.  Collingham?" 

It  was  the  lead  Junia  needed. 

"He's  perfect,  Jennie,  in  his  way;  and,  oh, 
129 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

how  I  wish  you  were  as  free  as  forty-eight  hours 
ago!  You  could  be,  of  course,  if —  But  I  mustn't 
advise  you,  must  I  ?  I  don't  know  how  to.  I'm 
just  as  lost  as  you  are.  Only,  if  you  could  find  a 
way  to  cast  the  burden  of  the  whole  thing  on 
Bob—" 

"Do  you  mean  to  make  him  get  the  divorce?" 

"In  that  case,  we  should  want  to  feel  that  you 
had  something  to  fall  back  upon.  And  so  my 
husband  thought  that  perhaps  twenty-five  thou- 
sand dollars — " 

Jennie  gave  a  great  gasp.  Her  head  began  to 
swim.  Not  villas  and  limousines  rose  before 
her,  but  cloud-capped  towers  and  gorgeous 
palaces. 

"Poor  daddy,"  she  thought,  "wouldn't  have 
to  hunt  for  a  job  any  more,  and  momma'd  have 
nothing  to  do  for  the  rest  of  her  life  but  sit  in  a 
chair  and  rock." 

Yet  that  was  only  part  of  the  vision.  The  rest 
did  not  go  so  easily  into  words.  She  had  only  to 
hurry  to  the  studio,  fling  herself  into  the  arms 
she  was  longing  to  feel  clasped  round  her — and 
become  fabulously  rich. 

That  would  be  if  Bob  took  the  opening  she 
offered  him.  If  he  didn't — 

"But  suppose  Bob  won't?"  she  asked,  in  terror 
lest  he  should  not. 

"I've  thought  of  that,  too,"  came  the  prompt 
answer.  "He  will,  of  course.  But  suppose  he 
didn't.  Well,  we're  not  hagglers,  my  dear. 
We're  only  simple  people  trying  to  do  right,  just 

130 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

as  you're  trying  to  do  right  yourself.  If  Bob  is 
only  in  a  position  in  which  he  can  undo  his 
wrong,  whether  he  undoes  it  or  not,  you  shall 
have  your  twenty-five  thousand  just  the  same." 

"Could  I  have  it  as  early  as — as  next  week?" 

"If  the  conditions  are  fulfilled,  certainly." 

Jennie  was  anxious  to  free  herself  from  the 
charge  of  cupidity. 

"The  reason  I  say  next  week  is  that  my  father 
is  worried  about  the  interest  on  the  mortgage 
and  the  taxes.  He  didn't  pay  the  interest  last 
time,  and  the  taxes  are  two  months  overdue.  If 
he  can't  find  the  money  by  next  week — " 

"You  yourself  can  be  in  a  position  to  take  all 
the  worry  off  his  hands — once  the  conditions  are 
fulfilled." 

Little  more  was  said  after  this.  There  was 
little  more  to  say.  The  necessities  of  the  case 
being  once  understood,  Junia  steered  her  guest 
back  to  the  car  which  waited  at  the  door. 

But  into  the  leave-taking  Max  threw  an  odd 
note  of  hostility.  As  if  he  resented  some  base- 
ness toward  his  master,  he  pressed  his  flank 
against  Jennie  with  such  force  as  almost  to 
knock  her  down,  and  when  she  sprang  away 
from  him  into  the  car  he  growled  after  her. 


CHAPTER  X 

O  you  can  do  it  ind  get  away  with  it." 

This  was  Ic  -y's  reflection  as  he  left  the 
bank  on  that  Thursday  afternoon.  He  had 
spent  an  infernal  day,  but  it  was  over,  and  over 
safely.  Of  the  missing  twenty  dollars  he  had 
neither  heard  a  word  nor  caught  a  sign  of  anxiety. 
Mr.  Brunt  had  been  methodical  and  taciturn  as 
usual.  Always  keeping  a  gulf  between  Teddy 
and  himself,  it  was  neither  more  nor  less  a  gulf 
to-day  than  it  was  on  other  days.  As  to  whether 
he  missed  twenty  dollars  or  whether  he  did  not, 
Teddy  could  form  no  idea. 

In  the  middle  of  the  morning  there  had  been 
a  terrifying  incident. 

"See  that  guy  over  there?"  Lobley,  one  of  his 
colleagues,  had  asked  him. 

He  saw  the  guy  over  there — a  crafty,  clean- 
shaven Celt — and  said  so. 

"That's  Flynn,  the  detective  who  copped 
Nicholson,  the  teller  at  the  Wyndham  National." 

"O  my  God!  I'm  pinched!"  Teddy  exclaimed 
to  himself.  "If  I  had  a  gun  or  a  dose  of  poison, 
he'd  never  get  me  alive." 

But  Flynn  only  chatted  with  Jackman,  one 
of  the  house  detectives,  laughed,  cashed  a  check 
at  a  wicket,  and  left  the  bank. 

132 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Teddy  breathed  again,  wondering  if  he  had 
given  anything  away  to  Lobley.  Was  it  pos- 
sible that  Lobley  could  have  heard  of  the  twenty 
dollars  and  been  set  to  try  him  out?  No;  he 
didn't  believe  so.  Lobley  had  merely  pointed 
out  Flynn  as  a  notable  character,  and  gone  about 
his  business. 

"I  shall  never  forget  that  mug,"  Teddy 
thought,  as  he  summoned  his  sang-froid  to  go  on 
with  his  work.  "The  mug  of  a  guy  without 
guts,"  he  added,  further  to  define  the  pitiless  set 
of  Flynn's  features.  "I  sure  would  kill  myself 
before  I  let  him  touch  me." 

There  was  no  other  alarm  that  day;  there  was 
only  the  incessant  fear,  the  incessant  watchful- 
ness that  made  him  shrink  from  every  eye  that 
glanced  his  way,  and  which,  when  office  hours 
were  over,  sent  him  scuttling  to  the  subway  like 
a  rabbit  to  its  hole. 

At  supper,  his  father  brought  up  again  the 
subject  of  the  taxes  and  the  interest  on  the 
mortgage.  The  latter  would  be  due  at  the  end 
of  the  following  week,  and  the  former  was  long 
overdue.  With  the  added  interest  on  both,  he 
owed  two  hundred  and  sixty-odd  dollars,  of  which 
he  had  borrowed  from  old  friends  a  hundred  and 
fifteen.  Between  the  sum  due  and  that  in  hand, 
there  was  a  gap  which  he  didn't  see  how  to  fill. 

"We'll  get  it  somehow,  daddy,"  Jennie  said, 
encouragingly.  "Don't  begin  worrying." 

"No;  Ted  '11  rob  the  bank,"  Gussie  laughed, 
flippantly. 

133 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Teddy  was  on  his  feet,  shaking  his  fist  across 
the  table. 

"See  here,  Miss  Gus;   that's  just  about — " 

Gussie  laughed  up  at  him,  still  more  flippantly. 

"You  haven't  robbed  it  already,  have  you? 
Momma>  do  make  him  behave." 

"Children,  don't  squabble,  please!  Teddy 
darling,  Gussie  was  only  poking  a  little  fun.  Sit 
down  and  have  some  more  hash.  It's  made  with 
beets  in  it,  just  the  way  you  like  it.  I  was 
reading,"  she  continued,  to  divert  the  minds  of 
the  company,  "of  that  teller  at  the  Wyndham 
National — " 

"Nicholson,"  Josiah  put  in.  "I  used  to  know 
him  when  I  was  at  the  Hudson  River  Trust. 
Sharp-eyed  little  ferret  face,  he  was.  Twenty- 
three  thousand,  extending  over  a  period  of  five 
years.  Often  had  lunch  with  him  at  the  same 
counter.  Blueberry  pie  was  a  favorite  of  his." 

"Twenty-three  thousand,  extending  over  a 
period  of  five  years!"  Teddy  repeated  that  to 
himself.  He  wondered  that  it  hadn't  struck  him 
when  he  heard  the  fellows  at  the  bank  discussing 
the  arrest.  One  of  them  had  claimed  "inside 
dope"  as  to  how  Nicholson  had  covered  up  his 
tracks,  and  explained  the  process.  Teddy  hadn't 
listened  to  that,  because  the  magnitude  of  the 
theft  had  excluded  its  bearing  on  his  own. 

But  there  it  was  forcing  itself  on  his  attention, 
like  Pansy's  cold  nose  pressed  at  that  minute 
against  his  hand.  You  could  have  five  years' 
leeway,  and  never  be  suspected.  He  pumped  his 

134 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

father  for  further  details  as  to  Nicholson's  life, 
learning  that  he  had  owned  his  home  at  Leffing- 
well  Manor,  where  he  had  been  a  member  of  the 
golf  club  and  a  church  goer. 

At  his  own  fears  Teddy  smiled  inwardly. 
Twenty  dollars,  which  would  certainly  be  paid 
back  in  the  course  of  a  few  weeks !  Already  he  had 
saved  seventy  cents  toward  the  restoration,  just  by 
going  without  his  lunch,  with  a  few  economies 
in  car  fares.  If  he  could  pawn  his  best  suit  of 
clothes,  he  would  have  the  whole  sum  within  a 
fortnight.  The  suit  had  been  bought  for  twenty- 
six  dollars,  and  would  certainly  bring  in  ten.  It 
would  be  a  matter  of  dodging  his  mother  and 
getting  it  out  of  the  closet  in  her  room,  where 
she  kept  it  in  order  to  regulate  his  use  of  it. 

As  supper  went  on,  it  was  little  Gladys  who 
brought  up  the  question  which  some  one  older 
might  have  asked. 

"What  would  happen,  daddy,  if  you  couldn't 
pay  the  interest  and  the  taxes?" 

"They  could  sell  us  out  of  house  and  home." 

But  this  possibility  being  more  than  a  week  off, 
the  statement  brought  no  fears  with  it.  Like 
all  people  who  at  the  best  of  times  are  dependent 
on  a  weekly  wage,  the  Folletts  had  the  mental 
attitude  best  described  as  "from  hand  to  mouth." 
That  is,  once  the  dinner  was  secure,  there  was  no 
will  to  worry  as  to  where  the  supper  was  to  come 
from.  It  was  fundamentally  a  question  of  out- 
look. People  used  to  being  provided  for  naturally 
looked  ahead;  but  where  your  most  extended 
10  '35 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

view  could  take  you  no  more  than  from  one  meal 
to  another  your  powers  of  forecast  grew  limited. 
Doubtless  the  provision  was  merciful,  for,  in  the 
case  of  the  Folletts,  even  the  parents  felt  the 
futility  of  dreading  a  calamity  more  than  a  week 
away. 

Of  all  the  six,  Jennie  was  the  only  one  with  a 
power  of  making  comparisons  and  drawing  con- 
trasts. She  had  had,  that  day,  a  glimpse  of  a 
world  as  different  from  her  own  as  paradise  from 
earth.  It  was  no  use  saying  that  it  was  different 
only  in  degree;  it  was  different  also  in  kind.  It 
was  different  in  values,  in  textures,  in  ampli- 
tudes. It  was  another  thing,  not  another  aspect 
of  the  same  thing.  Junia  Collingham  might  be  a 
human  being  like  herself;  but  in  all  that  was  of 
practical  account,  she  was  as  widely  separated 
from  Jennie  Follett  as  a  New  Yorker  from  a 
Central  African. 

That  was  as  far  as  Jennie  got.  Her  mind  was 
not  given  to  deduction  or  her  spirit  to  asking 
questions.  Not  having  a  God  in  particular,  she 
had  nothing  to  act  as  a  great  touchstone,  to  praise 
or  to  blame.  Some  human  beings  had  every- 
thing; others  had  next  to  nothing.  The  Folletts 
were  among  "the  others."  Jennie  didn't  know 
how  or  why.  She  didn't  ask  to  know.  Knowing 
would  perhaps  be  worse  than  not  knowing,  since 
it  might  stir  rebellion  where  there  was  now  only 
lassitude  and  resignation.  But  there  was  the 
fact.  The  Collinghams  could  throw  her  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  as  she  threw  a  titbit  to 

136 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Pansy,  while  her  father  might  be  sold  out  of  house 
and  home  for  lack  of  a  hundred  and  fifty. 

Jennie  mused,  but  she  did  no  more.  Life  was 
too  big  a  mystery  to  grapple  with.  If  she  tried 
it,  it  made  her  unhappy.  It  made  her  unhappy 
that  Max  should  have  been  friendly  at  first,  and 
then  growled  at  her  so  resentfully.  She  won- 
dered if  dogs  had  a  scent  for  moral  and  emotional 
atmospheres.  She  couldn't  express  this  last  in 
words,  but  she  did  it  very  well  by  thought.  She 
often  had  thoughts  for  which  she  had  no  words, 
so  that  her  inner  life  was  broader  than  that 
which  she  showed  outside.  It  was  one  of  the 
things  she  had  noticed  about  Mrs.  Collingham — 
that  she  had  words  for  everything.  It  was  like 
her  possession,  of  the  house,  the  gardens,  the 
beautiful  things.  They  gave  her  spaciousness. 
Her  spirit  moved  with  a  larger  swing.  She  could 
think,  feel,  express  herself  strongly,  vividly, 
commandingly,  while  they,  the  Folletts,  had  to 
creep  and  sneak  timidly  along  the  back  lanes  of 
life. 

"That's  why  I'm  doing  it,"  she  reasoned  with 
herself,  "because  I'm  in  the  back  lanes  of  life. 
I  can  creep  and  sneak  along,  and  I  can't  do  any- 
thing else.  It  was  all  very  well  for  him  to  jostle 
me  with  his  lean,  iron  flank  and  to  growl;  but 
he  didn't  know  what  twenty-five  thousand  would 
mean  to  me." 

Along  the  line  of  these  musings,  Teddy  said, 
suddenly: 

"Saw  young  Coll  to-day.  Came  up  and  spoke 
137 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

to  me.  Not  half  a  bad  sort  when  you  get  to 
know  him." 

Jennie  felt  a  little  faint,  but  no  one  noticed  it, 
because  Gussie  threw  back  the  ball. 

"Tell  him  to  come  up  and  speak  to  me.  Any 
afternoon  at  half  past  five,  when  I  leave  Corinne's." 

"Say,  Gus,"  Gladys  giggled;  "wouldn't  you 
like  a  guy  with  all  that  wad  waitin'  for  you  every 
day  when  Corinne  shuts  down  the  lid?  My! 
The  ice-cream  sodas  he  could  blow  you  to!" 

Lizzie  was  pained.  It  seemed  to  her  that  the 
process  of  Americanization  which  her  children 
were  undergoing  lay  chiefly  in  the  degradation 
of  their  speech. 

"Gladys  darling,  can't  you  find  proper  words 


"Oh,  momma  dear,"  Gladys  complained, 
"do  put  a  can  on  all  that.  If  you're  a  cash  girl, 
you've  got  to  talk  English,  or  the  other  girls  '11 
whizzy  you  round  the  lot." 

"Young  Coll  is  going  to  South  America," 
Teddy  informed  the  party.  "Sails  with  Huntley 
on  Monday.  Gosh!  Wouldn't  I  like  to  be  going, 
too!  Say,  dad,  why  do  some  fellows  come  into 
the  world  with  the  way  all  smoothed  for  them 
and  their  bread  buttered  in  advance?" 

"Because,"  Gussie  declared,  loftily,  "they're 
clever  and  can  get  ahead,  like  Fred  Inglis.  I'll 
bet  that  if  his  father  wanted  his  taxes  and  the 
interest  on  a  mortgage,  he  wouldn't  have  to 
raise  the  wind  among  his  old  friends.  Fred  'd  be 
Johnny-on-the-spot  with  the  greenbacks." 

138 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Teddy  could  only  gulp,  hang  his  head  over  his 
plate,  and  choke  himself  with  hash,  as  he  mut- 
tered to  his  soul;  "God!  I'll  shoot  that  Fred 
Inglis  if  I  ever  get  a  gun." 

And  just  as  if  she  knew  that  Teddy  needed 
comforting,  Pansy  sprang  upon  his  knees,  pushing 
her  face  up  along  his  breast  till  she  could  lick  his 
chin. 

Twenty-four  hours  later  Max  was  vexing  his 
soul  with  the  difficulty  of  transcending  planes. 
There  was  so  much  of  which  he  could  have 
warned  his  master,  now  that  he  had  got  him 
back  from  Long  Island;  but  there  was  neither 
speech  nor  language,  neither  symbol  nor  sign,  to 
make  human  ,beings  understand  anything  but 
the  most  primitive  needs  and  concepts.  Obe- 
dience! Disobedience!  Hunger!  Thirst!  Sor- 
row! Joy!  These  sentiments  could  be  put  over 
from  the  dog  plane  to  the  human  plane,  but 
without  shadings,  subtleties,  or  any  of  the  mar- 
vels of  untuitive  knowledge  by  which  dogs  could 
enlighten  men  if  men  had  open  faculties.  To 
another  dog,  he  could  have  flashed  his  informa- 
tion in  an  instant;  whereas  human  beings  could 
only  seize  ideas  when  they  were  beaten  into 
them  with  verbal  clubs. 

Edith  and  Bob  voted  Max  a  nuisance  because, 
in  his  agony  of  impotence,  he  pranced  restlessly 
about  the  bedroom,  lashing  his  tail  in  one  tempo 
and  pointing  his  ears  in  another.  Edith  had 
come  down  from  the  Berkshires  on  hearing  by 

139 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

wire  that  Bob  was  to  leave  next  Monday  for 
South  America.  She  was  seated  now  on  the  bed, 
her  back  against  the  footboard. 

"What  I  don't  quite  see,"  she  was  saying,  "is 
how  you  can  be  so  sure." 

Bob  looked  at  her  as  he  stood  taking  the  studs 
from  the  soft-bosomed  evening  shirt  in  his  hand 
to  transfer  them  to  the  clean  one  lying  on  the 
bed. 

"How  can  you  be  so  sure  about  Ayling?" 

"Well,  that's  a  little  different.  Ernest  speaks 
our  language;  he  has  our  ways.  Dad  and 
mother  make  a  fuss  because  he  hasn't  a  lot  of 
money;  but  that  means  no  more  than  if  he  didn't 
wear  a  certain  kind  of  hat.  He's  our  sort,  just 
the  same." 

"And  I'm  her  sort.  I  can't  explain  it  to  you, 
Edie,  but  she  needs  me." 

"How  do  you  know  she  needs  you?  Has  she 
ever  admitted  it?" 

"I  haven't  asked  her  to  admit  it.    I  can  see." 

"Yes,  that's  all  very  fine,  but — did  it  ever 
strike  you,  when  Hubert's  been  talking  about 
her,  that— 

Bob  made  an  inarticulate  sound  of  scorn  as  he 
inserted  the  cuff  links  into  a  cuff. 

"Oh,  Hubert's  a  top-hole  chap,  all  right;  but 
my  Lord ! — Jennie  wouldn't  look  across  the  street 
at  him." 

"  But  he  might  look  across  the  street  at  Jennie; 
and  with  you  so  far  away — 

He  smiled,  with  something  like  a  wink. 
140 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

"  Don't  you  fret  about  that.  She's  the  kind  of 
little  woman  to  be  true.  You  can't  mistake  'em." 

"We've  known  a  good  many  men  who  have 
mistaken  them." 

"You  haven't  known  my  kind  to  make  that 
sort  of  tumble.  Love  can  be  blind;  but  instinct 
can't  be.  Edie,  I  believe  so  much  in  that  girl 
that,  if  she  was  to  play  me  false —  But  there — 
good  Lord! — she  couldn't;  so  why  talk  about  it 
any  more?  See  here,"  he  added.  "If  you're 
going  to  change  your  dress,  you'll  have  to 
scuttle — and  I  must  get  into  my  waiter's  togs." 

Meanwhile  Dauphin's  struggles  were  of  an- 
other order.  It  was  the  hour  of  the  day  which 
he  was  accustomed  to  spend  with  Collingham, 
and  to  spend  it  undisturbed.  In  this  lovely 
spring  weather  they  strolled  about  the  gardens, 
peeped  into  the  hotbeds,  dropped  in  aimlessly 
at  the  stable  or  the  garage,  exchanged  odds  and 
ends  of  observation  with  the  men  working  around 
the  place.  After  this,  they  returned  to  the 
house,  where,  upstairs,  in  a  comfortably,  mascu- 
line bedroom,  the  man  made  changes  in  his 
outer  fur,  while  the  setter,  less  concerned  about 
trifles,  stretched  himself  out  on  the  floor  and 
blinked.  It  was  a  restful  time,  suited  to  a  mind 
which  after  the  stormier  years  was  growing  more 
and  more  content  with  material  prosperity,  and 
to  a  heart  that  was  always  content  with  its  mas- 
ter's contentment. 

But,  of  late,  poor  Dauphin  had  been  pain- 
141 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

fully  buffeted  by  waves  of  agitation.  They 
emanated  from  his  master,  like  circlets  round  a 
stone  thrown  into  a  pool.  When  his  master's 
wife  came  into  the  scene  the  conflict  of  forces 
was  terrible.  She  was  not  straight  with  her  lord. 
She  was  using  him,  hoodwinking  him.  Dauphin 
would  have  sprung  at  her  throat  had  it  not  been 
for  the  knowledge  that,  were  he  to  do  so,  he 
would  be  beaten  and  kicked  by  the  object  of  his 
defense.  No;  you  couldn't  deal  with  human 
beings  sensibly.  The  wise  thing  to  do  was  to 
stretch  on  the  floor  and  pretend  to  snooze  while 
they  fought  their  own  fight. 

They  didn't  precisely  fight  their  own  fight 
just  now.  Collingham  merely  accepted  terms. 
He  was  picking  up  his  evening  jacket  from  the 
bed  on  which  his  valet  had  laid  it  out.  Junia, 
dressed  exactly  to  the  mean  between  two  little 
and  too  much  suited  for  a  family  dinner,  had 
crossed  the  threshold  of  his  room,  where  she  stood 
adjusting  a  fall  of  lace. 

"As  I  told  you  yesterday  after  she  went  away, 
she's  just  what  you'd  expect  from  such  a  girl, 
certainly  no  better  and  possibly  a  little  worse. 
She's  a  mousey  little  thing,  with  a  veneer  of 
modesty;  but  *  mercenary'  isn't  the  word.  It's 
just  a  question  of  money,  Bradley;  and  if  you'll 
leave  it  to  me  to  deal  with — 

"Leave  it  to  you  to  deal  with — to  the  tune  of 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars,"  he  said,  morosely, 
pulling  his  coat  into  shape  round  his  shoulders 
as  he  looked  into  the  long  glass. 

142 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Well,  that's  only  half  what  it  might  have 
been.  I  thought  at  one  time  that  we  might  have 
to  make  it  fifty  thousand — " 

He  was  not  sure,  but  he  thought  she  finished 
with  the  word  "again."  If  so  it  was  uttered  too 
softly  for  him  to  be  obliged  to  take  note  of  it, 
so  that  he  merely  picked  up  a  hairbrush  and  put 
another  touch  to  his  hair. 

She  was  now  at  work  on  the  great  string  of 
pearls  which,  to  keep  them  alive,  she  wore  even 
in  domestic  privacy.  Her  object  was  to  get  the 
famous  Roehampton  pearl,  from  the  late  Lady 
Roehampton's  collection,  which  had  been  the 
seal  of  her  reconciliation  with  Bradley  fifteen 
years  earlier — tp  get  this  jewel  right  in  the  center 
of  her  person,  to  make  the  string  symmetric. 

"My  point  in  bringing  it  up  now,"  she  said, 
speaking  into  her  chin  as  her  eyes  inspected  the 
long  oval  of  the  necklet,  "is  to  remind  you  that 
you  don't  know  anything.  You  haven't  seen 
Bob  for  nearly  a  week,  and  after  Monday  you 
won't  see  him  for  two  or  three  months  at  least. 
Don't  let  him  suspect  that  you've  anything  on 
your  mind.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  you  haven't, 
except  what  I  tell  you — and  I  may  not  tell  you 
everything." 

"And  that  may  be- what  I  complain  of." 

"You  can't  complain  of  it  when  I  give  you  the 
results — now  can  you?  You  don't  complain  of 
Mr.  Bickley,  or  ask  him  for  all  the  reasons  he  has 
for  saying  this  or  that.  You  leave  him  a  free 
hand,  and  are  ruled  by  him — you've  often  said 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

it — even  when  your  own  preference  would  be  to 
do  something  else,  as  it  was  in  the  case  of  this 
man  Follett.  Now  I  only  claim  to  be  the  Mr. 
Bickley  of  the  family." 

That  he  had  rights  as  father  Collingham  was 
aware,  though  he  was  shy  of  putting  them  for- 
ward. Having  left  them  so  much  in  abeyance, 
it  would  have  been  as  ridiculous  to  emphasize 
them  now  as  to  dispute  Bickley  as  efficiency 
expert  at  the  bank.  Moreover,  the  uneasiness 
which  seizes  on  a  man  when  his  chickens  come 
home  to  roost  inclined  him  still  further  to  pas- 
sivity. If  Bob  was  "knocking  about  town,"  as 
he  seemed  to  be,  he  might  know  about  his  father 
what  Junia  did  not — or  presumably  did  not — 
that  the  woman  who  received  the  fifty  thousand 
dollars  had  had  her  successors,  and  that  even 
now  the  line  was  not  extinct.  While  he  knew  of 
amusing  incidents  of  fathers  and  sons  meeting 
on  this  ground,  any  such  contretemps  in  his  own 
case  would  have  shocked  him  profoundly.  Junia 
might  go  beyond  her  powers  in  prescribing  his 
course,  and  yet,  for  a  multitude  of  reasons  too 
subtle  for  him  to  phrase,  it  seemed  wise  to 
follow  what  Junia  prescribed. 

So  the  family  dined  and  spent  the  evening 
together  as  tourists  walk  across  the  Solfatara 
crater.  The  ground  was  hot  beneath  their 
tread,  and  here  and  there  a  whiff  of  sulphuric 
vapor  poured  through  a  fissure  in  the  crust; 
but  only  Max  and  Dauphin  sensed  the  volcanic 
fire. 

144 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Later  in  the  evening,  Junia  knelt  at  her  prie- 
dieu  with  the  armorial  books  of  devotion. 

"And,  O  heavenly  Father,"  she  added,  to  her 
usual  prayer,  "have  mercy  upon  that  poor 
erring  girl  and  help  her  to  repent.  Grant  that 
my  son  may  extricate  himself  from  the  toils  in 
which  he  is  entangled.  Enable  my  daughter  to 
see  that  her  duty  lies  in  the  station  of  life  to 
which  thou  hast  been  pleased  to  call  her.  Give 
my  husband  the  wisdom  to  seek  advice  and  to 
follow  it.  Lead  me  with  thy  counsel  so  that  I 
may  do  what  is  best  for  all  my  dear  ones,  through 
Jesus  Christ,  Our  Lord,  Amen." 

Having  thus  poured  out  her  heart,  she  rose 
feeling  stronger 'and  more  comforted. 


CHAPTER  XI 

IT  should  be  said  for  Jennie  Follett  that,  in  the 
matter  of  her  course  toward  Bob  Collingham, 
she  had  few  of  those  convictions  of  sin  and 
righteousness  which  restrain  a  proportion  of 
mankind.  As  with  the  other  members  of  her 
family,  her  conduct  followed  certain  lines  "be- 
cause she  couldn't  help  it."  That  is  as  far  as 
her  analysis  would  have  carried  her,  though 
analysis  didn't  give  her  much  concern.  Having 
so  much  to  do  to  get  food  and  clothes,  the  higher 
laws  were  outside  her  sphere  of  interest.  Her 
chief  law  was  Necessity,  and  it  covered  so  much 
ground  that  there  was  little  place  for  any  other  law. 
It  may  be  well  to  state  here  that  the  Folletts 
belonged  to  that  vast  American  contingent  who 
have  practically  no  religion.  They  had  had  a 
religion  in  Canada,  where  they  had  attended  the 
church  of  a  local  god  who  seemed  to  hold  no 
sway  over  the  United  States.  They  never  found 
that  church  in  the  suburbs  of  New  York,  or,  if 
they  found  it  nominally,  it  didn't,  in  their 
opinion,  "seem  the  same."  There  were  no  local 
suasions  and  compulsions  to  bring  them  to  its 
doors,  and  so,  after  a  few  spasmodic  efforts  to 
re-establish  the  connection,  they  gave  up  the 
attempt. 

146 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Perhaps  this  failure  was  due  to  the  fact  that, 
in  the  depths  of  her  strong,  proud  heart,  Lizzie 
didn't  believe  in  God.  Josiah  did — or,  at  least, 
he  had  believed  in  him  up  to  the  time  of  being 
thrown  upon  the  scrap  heap.  But  Lizzie's  faith 
in  God  had  died  with  the  dying  of  her  faith  in 
man.  She  had  never  said  so,  because  she  kept  her 
deeper  thoughts  to  herself;  but  along  these  lines 
her  influence  on  her  children  had  been  negative. 

So  Jennie  had  missed  those  counsels  to  do 
right  which  sometimes  form  a  part  of  domestic 
education.  With  so  little  latitude  for  doing  any- 
thing, there  was  not — apart  from  the  grosser 
vices — much  latitude  in  the  Follett  family  even 
for  doing  wrong'.  They  did  what  they  "couldn't 
help"  doing,  and  there  was  an  end  of  it.  A 
kind  of  inborn  rectitude  kept  them  from  offenses 
of  which  the  public  would  have  taken  note,  but 
behind  it  there  was  little  in  the  way  of  principle. 

Jennie  went  to  her  farewell  meeting  with  Bob 
untroubled  by  qualms  of  conscience.  Even  if 
scruples  had  worried  her,  they  would  have  been 
allayed  by  the  knowledge,  imparted  by  Bob's  own 
mother,  that  he  had  done  her  a  great  injury. 
He  made  the  same  kind  of  love  to  every  girl  he 
had  known  for  an  hour,  and  forgot  her  the  next 
day.  "One  of  these  days,"  the  mother  had  said, 
"some  girl  would  catch  him,  and  then  he  would 
be  sorry."  A  girl  hadn't  caught  him  in  this  case, 
but  he  had  caught  a  girl,  and  didn't  know  what  to 
do  with  her.  Having  compelled  her  to  go  through 
a  form  of  marriage — it  was  no  more  than  a  form 

H7 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

— he  was  sailing  off  to  the  ends  of  the  world, 
leaving  her  not  so  much  as  the  protection  of  his 
name.  She  owed  him  nothing;  and  only  the 
goodness  of  his  angel  mother  was  making  up  for 
what  he  owed  to  her. 

And,  on  his  side,  Bob  was  so  carried  away  by 
his  romance  as  to  have  no  conception  of  Jennie's 
attitude  toward  him.  Seeing  himself  as  a  knight 
riding  to  the  relief  of  a  damsel  in  distress,  it  did 
not  occur  to  him  that  the  damsel  could  have  a 
preference  as  to  her  deliverer.  It  was  a  matter 
of  course  that,  from  the  window  of  the  tower  in 
which  she  was  a  prisoner,  she  would  drop  into  his 
arms. 

In  other  words,  Bob  had  his  own  view  of  the 
advantages  of  being  a  Collingham.  They  were 
great  advantages,  since  they  gave  him  the  op- 
portunity of  being  generous.  He  was  in  love 
with  Jennie  largely  because  she  was  an  exquisite 
object  on  which  to  spend  himself.  She  was  a 
gem,  not  in  the  rough,  and  yet  in  need  of  polish- 
ing, and  though  his  own  refinement  was  not  so 
very  great,  he  could  throw  refinement  in  her  way. 

That  is  to  say,  love  for  Bob  was  very  much 
a  matter  of  giving  himself  out.  Girls  who  could 
have  brought  him  everything — and  they  were 
not  scarce  at  Marillo  Park— didn't  interest  him. 
They  left  no  place  for  the  selflessness  which  was 
the  basis  of  his  character.  He  couldn't  precisely 
be  called  kind,  since  kindness  implies  some  de- 
liberation of  the  will.  As  the  impulse  of  a  foun- 
tain is  to  pour  itself  out,  so  Bob's  impulse  was 

148 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

to  give,  while  Jennie  was  a  crystal  chalice  wide 
open  to  receive. 

"I  want  you  to  have  everything  in  the  world, 
Jennie  darling,"  he  declared,  bending  above  her 
as  lovingly  as  a  bench  in  the  park  would  permit. 
"I  can't  give  it  to  you  right  off  the  bat,  worse 
luck,  but  sooner  or  later  I'll  be  able  to  dope  you 
out  every  little  wish.  Good  Lord!  How  I'll 
enjoy  it." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  sooner  or  later?" 
Jennie  asked,  with  eyes  downcast. 

"When  I  get  the  family  broken  to  the  bit. 
I  can't  tell  you  in  dates  or  time.  They'll  be  hard 
in  the  mouth  at  first;  and  mother  pulls  like  the 
devil." 

At  this  false  witness,  Jennie  was  revolted. 
No  one  knew  better  than  herself  the  bigness  of 
that  maternal  heart  which,  as  early  as  next  week, 
would  give  liberal  proof  of  its  sincerity,  when 
Bob's  promises  would  still  be  in  the  air. 

Bob  had  the  afternoon  at  his  disposal.  The 
park  offered  itself  as  a  delicious  trysting  place, 
because  it  was  the  month  of  May.  In  a  nook 
where  lilac  and  syringa  overshadowed  them  and 
water  glinted  between  lawns  and  glades,  they 
sat  discreetly  side  by  side,  and  she  permitted  him 
to  hold  her  hand. 

He  went  on  to  sketch  his  plans  for  the  imme- 
diate future.  His  most  trying  lack  was  that  of 
ready  cash.  The  parental  system  had  always 
been  generous  as  to  things,  but  penurious  in 
money.  In  the  matter  of  things,  he  would  be  as 

149 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

extravagant  as  he  reasonably  liked,  so  long  as 
the  bills  were  sent  to  dad.  Before  he  went  to 
work  at  the  bank,  his  allowance  in  money 
wouldn't  have  kept  him  in  cigarettes.  Even  now, 
he  was  only  on  the  weekly  pay  roll  for  thirty- 
eight  dollars  and  sixty-six  cents  per,  handed  him 
in  a  pay  envelope.  Food,  lodging,  clothes, 
saddle  horses,  motor  cars — all  these  were  thrown 
in  extra;  but  in  actual  coin  he  didn't  handle 
more  than  his  two  thousand  dollars  a  year, 
like  any  other  clerk. 

Jennie  could  see,  therefore,  that,  to  begin  with, 
their  position  would  be  difficult,  though  only  to 
begin  with.  He  could  send  her  a  little  money 
while  he  was  away,  but  it  wouldn't  be  very 
much. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  send  me  any,"  she  said, 
hastily. 

"You  forget  that  I'm  your  husband,  dear. 
If  I  didn't,  you  could  bring  an  action  for  divorce 
on  the  ground  of  nonsupport." 

This  idea  being  new  to  Jennie,  she  had  it 
explained  to  her,  rejecting  it  as  a  resource  be- 
cause it  was  unromantic. 

"And  so,  to  be  on  the  safe  side  against  that," 
he  laughed,  "I've  got  .this  for  you  now." 

Slipping  an  envelope  from  his  pocket,  he  forced 
it  into  the  hand  he  was  holding. 

"It's  only  a  hundred  dollars — "  he  was  be- 
ginning to  explain. 

She  snatched  her  hand  away  as  if  she  had  been 
stung. 

150 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

"Oh,  Bob,  I  can't!" 

That  situation  amused  him.  It  was  one  more 
proof  of  the  nai've  honesty  of  the  little  girl.  He 
knew  how  hard  up  she  was,  how  hard  up  all  the 
family  must  be,  and  yet  money  didn't  tempt  her. 

"You're  a  funny  little  kid,"  he  laughed, 
drawing  her  as  near  to  him  as  the  park  laws 
would  permit.  "You'd  think  I  didn't  have  a 
right  to  take  care  of  you." 

But  Jennie  was  feeling  that  if  she  took  this 
money  she  would  be  bound  to  him  by  principles 
more  acute  than  the  promises  she  had  made 
before  the  parson. 

"No,  Bob,  I  can't.  Please  don't  make  me — 
please!" 

But  in  the  end  he  forced  it  on  her,  and  she 
stowed  it  away  in  her  little  bag.  By  that  time, 
too,  she  had  reviewed  the  family  situation.  With 
a  hundred  dollars  in  her  possession  they  could 
less  easily  be  sold  out  of  house  and  home  at  the 
end  of  the  following  week.  That  calamity,  at 
least,  could  be  dodged,  whatever  other  misfor- 
tune might  overtake  herself.  She  might  decide 
that  to  be  sold  out  of  house  and  home  would  be 
easier  than  to  bind  herself  further  to  Bob  by 
using  his  money;  but,  still,  she  would  have  the 
choice.  As  to  the  twenty-five  thousand,  there 
was  always  the  possibility  that  it  might  not  come 
in  time.  She  had  not  yet  seen  Hubert;  she 
couldn't  see  him  till  Bob  had  sailed.  When  she 
did,  the  other  woman  might  be  in  her  place  and 
her  heart  would  have  to  break  in  spite  of  every- 
11  151 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

thing.  Better  it  should  break  with  a  hundred 
dollars  in  her  pocket  than  that  she  should  be 
helpless  to  stay  the  family  disaster. 

But  when  Bob  sailed  on  the  Monday  she  was 
free  to  make  the  great  test.  Notwithstanding 
his  definite  farewells  on  the  Saturday,  he  had 
tried  to  see  her  again  on  the  Sunday,  but  the 
necessity  for  secrecy  made  it  possible  for  her  to 
put  him  off.  For  one  thing,  she  couldn't  go 
through  a  second  time  such  a  good-by  as  that  of 
Saturday.  Bob  had  been  too  much  overcome. 
As  unexpectedly  to  himself  as  to  her,  he  had 
broken  down.  Braving  all  publicity,  he  had  sud- 
denly seized  her  hand,  pressed  it  to  his  lips,  and 
as  he  bent  over  it  she  could  feel  his  tears  against 
her  fingers.  He  hadn't  exactly  cried;  he  had 
only  breathed  hard,  with  two  great  sobs. 

"My  God!  how  I  love  you,  Jennie!"  she  had 
heard  him  muttering.  "How  I  love  you!  Howl 
love  you!  How  can  I  do  without  you  all  the  time 
till  I  come  back?"  When  he  raised  his  head  he 
laughed  sheepishly,  though  the  tears  were  still 
on  his  cheeks.  "Forget  it,  little  girl,"  he  begged, 
unsteadily,  wiping  his  cheeks  and  blowing  his 
nose.  "I  just  worship  you,  and  that's  all  there 
is  about  it.  It  breaks  me  all  up  to  go  away  and 
leave  you;  but  the  time  will  pass,  and,  if  I  can 
help  it,  I  shall 'never  go  away  from  you  again." 

Defying  the  park  laws  once  more,  he  had 
kissed  her  and  kissed  her.  She  had  let  him  do 
it  because  she  was  so  unnerved.  Besides,  she 
was  sorry  for  him,  and  would  have  been  sorrier 

152 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

still  if  she  hadn't  known  that  by  tomorrow  he 
would  have  forgotten  her.  That  was  always  the 
way  with  fellows  who  took  things  so  hard.  The 
true  love  was  too  stern  and  strong  to  show 
emotion. 

Nevertheless,  she  had  had  an  unhappy  Sunday 
thinking  of  those  two  sobs.  It  was  not  until 
after  ten  o'clock  on  Monday  morning  that  she 
was  able  to  turn  again  to  the  compulsion  of  the 
man  she  loved.  At  ten,  Bob  sailed,  and  that 
episode  in  Jennie's  life  was  probably  behind  her. 
By  the  time  he  came  back,  he  would  be  in  love 
with  a  girl  of  his  own  class  and  eager  to  seize 
the  freedom  she,  Jennie,  would  be  in  a  position 
to  deliver  him.  At  last  the  way  was  clear.  She 
had  only  to  go  to  her  lover  and  tell  him  she  was 
there. 

She  went  that  afternoon.  Her  plan  was 
simple.  She  would  say  that  if  he  had  not  yet 
found  a  model  for  the  girl  in  the  Byzantine 
chair,  she  was  ready  to  do  the  work.  The  rest 
would  come  as  a  matter  of  course. 

Now  that  she  was  face  to  face  with  the  task, 
her  heart  was  oddly  apathetic.  "I  might  be  out 
to  buy  postage  stamps,"  she  said  to  herself, 
while  crossing  the  ferry. 

None  the  less,  she  wished  she  didn't  have  to 
look  at  this  water  down  which  Bob  had  sailed 
only  four  or  five  hours  previously.  Off  toward 
the  south,  in  the  haze  of  the  warm  May  after- 
noon, there  was  a  giant  steamer  lying  as  if  be- 
calmed. It  might  be  his.  There  was  one  still 

153 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

farther  out  to  sea.  That,  too,  might  be  his.  Far 
down  on  the  horizon,  just  passing  out  of  sight, 
there  was  a  little  black  spot  with  a  pennon  of 
black  smoke.  That  could  very  easily  be  his. 
She  watched  it.  It  might  be  carrying  him  away 
to  where  he  would  forget  her.  Perhaps  he  had 
forgotten  her  already.  His  mother  had  said — 
and  his  mother  must  know  him — that  he  made 
love  to  girls  one  day  and  forgot  them  on  the 
next,  and  it  was  already  two  days  since  Saturday. 
Very  well!  Let  him  forget!  Only,  it  didn't  seem 
as  if  those  kisses  and  those  tears  were  quite  in 
keeping  with  a  heart  which  treated  love  so  easily. 

She  was  glad  when  the  ferryboat  bumped 
softly  against  its  pier  and  she  could  get  away 
from  the  great  stream  of  which  the  very  smells 
and  sounds  would  now  begin  to  make  her  think 
of  him.  She  wished  there  was  another  means  of 
returning  home.  She  wished  he  had  gone  by 
train.  She  wished.  .  .  . 

At  the  dpor  of  the  studio  building  she  was 
seized  with  a  great  terror.  She  began  to  under- 
stand what  it  was  she  had  come  to  do.  She  had 
come  to  give  herself  up.  She  was  to  say,  in  fact, 
"Here  I  am — take  me."  And  he  would  take 
her — if  he  hadn't  already  taken  some  one  else. 
The  betrayal  of  a  husband  who  was  hardly  a 
husband  was  no  longer  in  her  mind.  She  was 
appalled  at  this  yielding  of  herself. 

Yet  she  did  everything  as  she  had  been  ac- 
customed to  do  it  and  entered  the  studio  by  the 
door  she  generally  used. 

IS4 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

At  first  she  thought  there  was  no  one  there. 
Certainly  the  other  woman  was  not  there,  and 
that  was  so  far  a  relief.  Slowly,  cautiously,  she 
made  her  way  between  the  brocades,  old  fur- 
niture, and  pedestals.  Then  she  saw  Hubert  and 
Hubert  saw  her. 

She  stood  very  much  as  a  deer  stands  when 
surprised  in  the  bracken — head  erect,  eyes  curi- 
ous. Till  he  gave  her  a  sign  she  made  no  move- 
ment to  go  farther.  And  for  a  minute  he  gave 
her  no  sign.  He  only  remained  seated  and  looked. 
He  looked,  with  a  sketch  and  pencil  in  his  hand. 
He  had  been  occupied  in  touching  something  up. 

But  she  couldn't  mistake  it.  It  was  the  girl 
in  the  Byzantine  chair.  Her  heart,  which  seemed 
to  swell  to  thrice  its  size,  thumped  painfully. 

Then,  at  last,  a  smile  broke  over  his  face, 
lifting  his  mustache  and  mounting  to  his  violet 
eyes.  He  didn't  speak;  he  didn't  move.  He 
only  looked,  hushed,  enraptured,  as  the  hunter 
at  the  startled  deer. 


CHAPTER  XII 

FEELING  that  an  explanation  of  her  presence 
in  the  studio  should  come  from  herself, 
Jennie  faltered: 

"I — I  only  looked  in  to  say  that  if  you  hadn't 
found  a  model  for — for  the  picture  you  wanted 
to  paint,  I  might — I  might  be  able  to  pose." 

Though  she  hadn't  advanced  and  he  hadn't 
moved,  the  extraordinary  light  in  his  eyes  made 
her  heart  thump  more  wildly. 

"You'd  do  it" — he  held  up  the  sketch — 
"dressed  like  that?" 

She  remembered  his  own  phrase,  "If  I'm  to 
be  that  kind  of  a  model  I  must  be  that  kind  of 
a  model — and  do  what's  expected." 

The  process  of  starving  out  being  so  far  suc- 
cessful, Wrav  felt  it  well  to  push  it  a  little  more. 
He  rose  wit-  an  air  of  distress. 

"I  wish  you  could  have  told  me  this  last  week, 
Jennie.  As  it  is — " 

"You've  got  some  one  else?" 

"Not  definitely.  I've  tried  out  three — two  of 
them  no  good,  though  the  third  might — " 

"Might  do  as  well  as  me?" 

"Perhaps  better  in  some  ways.  I  mean,"  he 
added  hastily,  as  she  seemed  about  to  go,  "that 
she's  a  real  professional  model,  and  for  this  kind 

156 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  job,  of  course,  a  professional  would  be — let  us 
say,  more  at  her  ease." 

So  many  good  things  had,  during  the  past  few 
days,  swum  into  Jennie's  vision,  only  to  swim 
out  again,  that  she  had  grown  almost  used  to 
this  fading  of  her  hopes.  Nevertheless,  the  bliss 
of  loving  Hubert  and  getting  twenty-five  thou- 
sand dollars  for  it  had  seemed  tolerably  sure. 
To  lose  it  now  would  be  hard;  but  harder  still, 
for  the  moment,  at  least,  was  this  tone  of  detach- 
ment, of  indifference.  That  another  woman 
should,  in  some  ways,  do  better  than  herself 
was  worse  than  the  last  indignity.  Her  lip 
trembled.  She  was  about  to  turn  away  with  that 
collapse  of  the  figure  which  marks  the  woman 
who  has  lost  all  hope. 

He  hurried  up  to  her,  laying  his  hand  on  her 
arm  in  a  way  that  made  a  thrill  run  through  her 
frame. 

"Wait  a  minute,  Jennie!  I'd  like  to  talk  it 
over.  If  you  want  me  to  try  you  out — 

"What  does  that  mean — try  me  out?" 

"Oh,  simply  that  you'd  take  the  pose,  so  that 
I  could  see  how  nearly  you'd  come  up  to  what  I 
want.'* 

"  And  then  if  I  didn't— " 

He  smiled.  "Oh,  but  you  will — at  least  I 
think  so." 

"When  would  you  do  it?" 

"Oh,  right  now.  As  soon  as  you  like.  I've 
got  the  time." 

She  looked  at  him  inquiringly,  but  there  was 
157 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

nothing  in  his  eyes  to  answer  the  question  she 
was  asking. 

"Oh,  very  well,"  she  said,  dully,  and  once 
more  turned  toward  the  little  door. 

She  had  taken  a  step  or  two  when  he  said, 
suddenly, 

"Jennie,  what  made  you  come  back?" 

She  paused,  turned  again,  and  pulled  herself 
together.  It  was  necessary  to  take  the  old 
bantering  tone.  After  all,  she  could  fence  in  her 
way  as  well  as  anybody  else. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  she  threw  off  carelessly. 
"I  thought  I  might  as  well." 

"Might  as  well  what?" 

"Oh,  go  in  for  the  whole  thing.  As  you 
say  yourself,  if  you're  to  be  that  kind  of  a 
model—" 

"And  was  that  all?" 

"'All?'     It  was  a  good  deal,  I  should  say." 

"It  was  a  good  deal,  yes — but  I  asked  if  it 
was  all." 

"Well,  ask  away,  my  boy.  I  don't  have  to 
answer  you  or  go  to  jail,  now  do  I?" 

Extraordinary  the  relief  of  falling  back  on 
studio  badinage!  It  took  her  off  the  Collingham 
stilts,  away  from  the  high-wrought  Collingham 
emotions.  She  began  to  see  what  the  trouble 
was  with  Bob.  His  touch  wasn't  light  enough. 
He  was  too  purposeful.  He  seemed  to  think  you 
must  mean  something  all  the  time.  Mrs.  Col- 
lingham, too,  seemed  to  think  so.  It  was  not  in 
Bob's  language  so  much  as  in  his  cast  of  mind; 

158 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

but  it  was  in  his  mother's  cast  of  mind,  and  in 
her  language,  too. 

Jennie  thought  of  this  as  she  stood  before  the 
pier-glass  in  the  little  dressing-room,  first  taking 
off  her  jacket,  and  then  unpinning  her  hat.  She 
would  have  to  do  her  hair  on  the  top  of  her  head 
like  the  girl  in  Hubert's  sketch.  "And  that's  all 
the  clothes  I  shall  need  to  put  on,"  she  tried  to 
say  flippantly.  She  tried  to  say  it  flippantly, 
because  that,  too,  would  be  along  the  line  that 
people  took  who  weren't  Collinghams. 

People  who  weren't  Collinghams !  That  meant 
all  the  people  in  Indiana  Avenue,  all  the  people 
in  Pemberton  Heights,  the  vast  majority  of  the 
people  in  the  United  States,  not  to  speak  of  any 
other  country.  Jennie  had  a  good  many  ac- 
quaintances, and  the  family,  taken  as  a  whole, 
had  more;  but  she  couldn't  think  of  anyone  in 
their  class  who  took  life  as  more  than  a  skim- 
ming on  the  surface.  Outside  the  bounden 
duties  which  they  couldn't  avoid  they  chiefly 
liked  being  silly. 

She  thought  of  that,  too,  loosening  her  hair 
and  letting  it  fall  in  amber  wavelets  over  her 
shoulders  and  down  her  back.  Mrs.  Collingham 
had  said  that  it  was  lovely  hair,  but  she  hadn't 
really  seen  it.  There  was  so  much  of  it  that, 
when  she  piled  it  up  like  the  girl  in  the  sketch, 
it  almost  overweighted  her  delicate  little  face. 

No;  whatever  you  could  say  about  people 
like  the  Collinghams,  you  couldn't  say  they 
were  silly.  They  had  motives,  opinions,  points 

IS9 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  view.  They  had  minds,  and  they  used  them. 
They  might  not  use  them  well,  but  to  use  them 
at  all  was  better  than  to  let  them  grow  atrophied. 
Jennie,  as  has  been  said,  had  no  words  to  ex- 
press these  thoughts,  but,  like  Pansy,  she  could 
do  without  a  vocabulary.  She  felt;  she  vi- 
brated. She,  too,  had  a  mind,  though  she  was 
afraid  of  putting  it  to  work.  Lingering  over  the 
piling  of  her  hair,  she  wondered  if  the  use  or 
nonuse  of  the  mind  marked  the  real  line  between 
people  like  the  Collinghams  and  people  like  the 
Folletts.  Was  that  why  the  country  was  di- 
vided into  highbrows  and  lowbrows — those  who 
made  the  best  of  what  they  had,  and  those  who 
disqualified  themselves  for  all  the  stronger  pur- 
poses? Since  her  peep  at  Marillo  Park,  she  saw 
that  something  admitted  one  to  such  a.  haven, 
and  something  kept  one  out.  There  was  money, 
of  course,  and  position;  but  back  of  both  position 
and  money  wasn't  it  the  case  that  there  was 
mind  ? 

She  threw  off  her  blouse  and  lingered  again 
to  examine  her  arms  and  bust.  She  lingered  on 
purpose,  putting  off  the  extraordinary  thing  she 
had  to  do  to  the  latest  possible  minute. 

At  Collingham  Lodge,  she  had  caught  glimpses 
of  books,  papers,  and  magazines.  Even  in  the 
bird  cage  they  were  lying  on  the  table  and  chairs. 
The  Folletts  hardly  ever  read  a  book.  The  only 
work  of  the  kind  she  could  remember  the  family 
ever  to  have  bought  was  one  called  Ancient 
Rome  Restored,  which  her  mother  had  sub- 

160 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

scribed  for  in  monthly  parts  when  an  agent 
brought  a  sample  to  the  house.  It  was  at  a 
time  when  Lizzie  was  afraid  that  her  children — 
they  were  children  still — would  grow  up  with- 
out cultivation.  Ancient  Rome  Restored,  being 
abundantly  illustrated,  called  out  in  the  young 
Folletts  the  almost  extinct  Scarborough  tradi- 
tion. Having  no  other  important  picture  book 
to  look  at,  they  pored  over  the  glories  of  the 
Forum,  of  Hadrian's  Villa,  of  the  Baths  of 
Caracalla,  till  an  odd,  incipient  love  of  classic 
beauty  began  to  stir  in  them.  But  there  their 
cultivation  ended.  In  the  papers  they  studied 
only  the  murders,  burglaries,  and  comic  cuts. 
In  the  way  of  general  entertainment,  the  movies 
formed  their  sole  relaxation,  but  unless  the  play 
was  silly  they  complained.  Anything  that  asked 
for  thought  they  kicked  against,  and  Pemberton 
Heights  kicked  with  them.  Was  that  why  there 
was  a  Pemberton  Heights  and  a  Marillo  Park? 
Did  the  power  of  thought  control  the  difference 
between  them?  Was  it  that  where  there  was 
little  or  no  power  of  thought,  there  was  little  or 
nothing  of  anything  else? 

She  unhooked  her  skirt  and  let  it  slip  down  to 
a  circular  heap  about  her  feet.  She  wondered 
if  the  girl  who  would,  in  some  ways,  do  better 
than  herself  were  as  lithely  built  as  she.  Mrs. 
Collingham  had  likened  her  to — oh,  what  was 
it?  It  was  a  spire.  It  sounded  like  a  chapel. 
She  had  tossed  it  off  as .  something  that  every- 
body knew  about.  So  she  had  tossed  off  other 

161 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

names,  taking  it  for  granted  that  Jennie  would 
have  them  at  her  fingers'  ends. 

The  more  she  pondered  the  more  sure  of  it 
she  became — that  she  and  her  kind  were  poor 
and  helpless  chiefly  because  they  wouldn't  take 
the  trouble  to  be  otherwise.  Not  to  stray  from 
the  childish,  the  sentimental,  and  the  obvious 
gave  them  the  relief  she  found  in  returning  to  the 
lingo  she  had  always  used  with  Wray. 

She  had  used  it  with  Bob,  too — only,  with 
Bob  she  had  used  it  differently.  Perhaps  it  was 
he  who  had  used  it  differently.  Between  her  and 
Wray,  it  had  never  been  more  than  the  medium 
of  chafF,  except  on  those  occasions  when  it  had 
become  the  vehicle  of  a  half-acknowledged  pas- 
sion. Bob  had  tried  to  say  something  with  it, 
even  when  slangy  or  colloquial.  He  had  treated 
her  as  if  she  was  worth  talking  to.  He  had 
tried  to  make  her  feel  that  she  could  talk  on 
better  themes  than  any  they  ever  broached. 

Poor  Bob — sailing  away  to  the  south,  thinking 
that  where  he  left  her  there  he  would  find  her! 
Little  he  knew!  If  he  could  only  see  her  now! 
If  he  could  only  dream  of  what  she  would  be 
doing  in  ten  minutes'  time!  If  he  only  .  .  . 

Something  made  her  shudder.  She  felt  cold. 
Perhaps  the  wind  had  changed  outside,  as  it 
often  did  in  May.  She  stooped,  picked  up  her 
skirt,  and  mechanically  hooked  it  round  her. 
Still  feeling  chilled,  she  crossed  her  arms  and 
hugged  herself.  A  minute  or  two  later  she  had 
put  on  her  blouse  and  her  jacket.  She  meant 

162 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

to  take  them  off  again  as  soon  as  she  stopped 
shivering.  Already  Hubert  would  be  cursing  her 
delay. 

She  thought  of  the  light  in  his  eyes  when  she 
told  him  that,  after  all,  she  had  come  to  pose. 
The  memory  of  it  made  her  heart  jump  again, 
with  a  great,  single  throb.  It  was  the  cave  man's 
light.  She  never  saw  it  in  Bob's,  and  never  would. 
Bob's  eyes  were  twinkling  and  kind.  She  didn't 
suppose  she  would  ever  see  such  kind  eyes  in  any- 
one else.  If  kindness  were  what  she  wanted  .  .  . 

Beginning  to  feel  warmer,  she  noticed  how 
grotesque  her  hair  was  with  her  spring  sport 
suit.  She  had  stuck  through  it  a  great  skewer, 
with  a  handle  of  artificial  jade,  which  she  had 
used  with  some  other  costume.  But  the  high 
crown  of  hair  was  so  little  in  keeping  with  the 
rest  of  her  that  she  pulled  out  the  skewer  and 
the  other  pins,  again  letting  the  glinting  cataract 
tumble  down. 

Why  had  Bob  never  asked  her  if  she  loved  him? 
Hubert  had  done  it  a  hundred,  perhaps  a  thou- 
sand times.  Bob  had  seemed  to  think  that  his 
loving  her  covered  all  possible  conditions.  What 
he  had  to  give  her  was  always  the  theme  of  his 
enthusiasm,  as  if  she  were  a  beggar  who  could 
give  nothing  in  return.  With  Hubert,  it  was 
what  he  was  to  get  from  her.  She  was  the  richly 
dowered  one  who  could  offer  or  withhold.  He 
would  take  all — and  give  nothing. 

Well,  let  him!  It  was  what  she  wanted — to 
be  drained  dry.  If  she  was  to  give  herself  up, 

163 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

she  would  give  herself  up.  When  Hubert  had 
done  with  her,  he  would  chuck  her  on  the  scrap 
heap  like  her  father.  That  was  the  way  she 
loved  him.  That  was  the  way  to  be  loved. 
Cave  men  didn't  watch  lest  you  should  get  damp 
feet,  or  have  their  lives  insured  for  you.  Their 
love  was  passion,  a  fire  that  burned  you  up  and 
left  you  a  white  bit  of  ash. 

And  yet  to  be  burned  up  and  left  a  white  bit  of 
ash  was  something  for  which  she  was  not  yet 
prepared.  She  didn't  say  this  to  herself.  All  of 
a  sudden  she  was  terrified.  Whatever  instinct 
governed  her  went  into  the  nimbleness  of  her 
fingers  as  she  began  flattening  her  hair  so  as  to 
put  on  her  hat.  She  didn't  know  why  she  was 
doing  this.  She  didn't  even  know  that  she 
wanted  to  get  away.  It  was  just  a  wild  impulse 
to  be  back  as  the  everyday  Jennie  Follett.  The 
girl  in  the  Byzantine  chair  was  out  of  the  ques- 
tion— for  to-day.  To-morrow,  perhaps! — prob- 
ably— quite  surely!  But  for  to-day  she  must  still 
belong  for  a  few  more  hours  to  herself.  Hubert 
might  come  thumping  any  minute  on  the  door, 
and  if  he  found  her  dressed  for  the  street  .  .  . 

And  just  then  he  did  come  thumping  on  the 
door. 

"Jennie,  for  God's  sake,  what's  the  matter? 
Are  you  dead  ? " 

She  gasped.  It  would  have  been  a  relief  if 
she  could  have  fainted.  All  she  could  do  was  to 
thrust  the  last  pin  into  her  hat  and  go  to  the 
door  and  open  it. 

164 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Hubert  stood  aghast. 

"Well,  by  all  the  holy  cats—!" 

"I'm  not  well,  Mr.  Wray,"  she  pleaded,  with 
sudden  inspiration. 

"Ah,  go  on,  Jennie!  You  were  well  enough 
twenty  minutes  ago." 

"Yes;  but  since  then  I've  been  feeling  chilled." 

He  strode  into  the  dressing-room,  which  he 
was  not  supposed  to  do. 

"Chilled — hell!  Why,  this  hole's  as  hot  as 
blazes." 

"It  isn't  that.  I  think  it's  a  germ-cold  I'm 
taking." 

"See  here,  Jennie,"  he  said,  sternly.  "You're 
going  to  funk  it.  All  right!  It  doesn't  make 
much  difference  to  me.  The  other  girl — it's 
Emma  Brasshead — you  know! — she  was  the 
middle  one  in  Sims's  three  nudes — perfectly 
stunning  hips — " 

"I'll  be  here  to-morrow — right  on  the  dot." 

He  wheeled  away  as  far  as  the  space  of  the 
dressing-room  would  permit. 

"Oh,  well,  Jennie,  I  don't  know  that  it  would 
be  of  much  use,  after  all.  Emma's  the  type,  you 
see.  You'd  be  too — " 

"You  can't  tell  that  till — till  you've  tried  me 
out." 

"I  can  try  you  out  right  through  your  clothes. 
What's  a  man  a  painter  for?" 

"If  you  can  do  that,  why  did  you  want  me 
to- 

He  turned  sharply. 

165 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Jennie,  you're  not  straight  with  me." 

"Oh,  but  I  am!  I'm  as  straight  with  you  as — 
as  you  are  with  me.  But  I  can't  help  being 
sick." 

"You  can't  help  being  Jennie,"  he  muttered, 
brokenly,  "the  girl  I  worship  and  who  worships 
me.  Jennie!  Jennie!  Jennie!" 

"Oh,  don't,  Hubert;  don't!"  she  begged. 
"To-morrow!  I'll  come  to-morrow,  and  then — " 

But  he  smothered  these  protests. 

"You  wildcat!     You  adorable  tigress!" 

"Yes,  Hubert — but  to-morrow — " 

"No,  no!" 

His  kisses,  his  brutalities,  were  agony  to  her, 
and  yet  they  were  bliss.  She  didn't  know  why 
she  fought  them  off,  or  what  instinct  led  her  to 
defend  herself,  or  how  she  found  herself  out  on 
the  stairs. 

She  went  down  slowly.  She  was  not  angry; 
she  was  only  excited  and  a  little  amused.  Sex 
fury  was  less  romantic  than  she  had  supposed; 
but  as  an  exhibition  of  the  human  being  at  his 
most  animal,  it  was  "some  curtain  raiser."  If 
she  had  to  go  through  it  again  .  .  . 

But  as  she  jogged  toward  the  ferry  in  the 
street  car,  this  mood  passed  off.  She  grew  sick 
with  a  sense  of  failure.  Love  and  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  were  at  stake,  and  she  had 
funked  the  game.  She  was  not  a  sport;  she 
wondered  if  she  were  a  woman.  If  she  couldn't 
play  up  better  than  this,  she  would  have  Bob 
back  on  her  hands  again  and  be  shamed  forever 

1 66 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

before  Mrs.  Collingham,  who  had  been  so  good 
to  her.  Moreover,  if  she  continued  to  play  fast 
and  loose  with  Wray  he  would  certainly  return 
to  Miss  Brasshead. 

She  dreaded  reaching  the  ferry  and  having  to 
go  on  the  boat.  The  river  was  now  haunted  by 
Bob,  like  the  sea  by  a  phantom  ship.  While 
crossing,  she  sat  with  her  eyes  closed  so  as  to 
shut  out  this  memory  by  not  looking  at  the 
water. 

Arrived  on  the  New  Jersey  side,  she  was  so 
much  earlier  than  she  usually  returned,  and  so 
dispirited,  that  she  decided  to  walk  home, 
threading  the  way  through  sordid  streets  till  she 
climbed  the  more  cleanly  ascent  to  the  Heights. 
The  Heights  has  a  common  as  well  as  a  square, 
and  Jennie's  way  took  her  through  the  great 
shady  grassplot,  where  men  were  lounging  on 
benches,  nurses  wheeling  their  babies,  and  boys 
playing  baseball.  Round  the  common  are  the 
civic  monuments  of  Pemberton  Heights,  the 
bank,  the  post-office,  the  hospital,  the  engine 
house,  and  the  public  library.  Jennie  looked  at 
this  last  as  if  she  had  never  seen  it  before. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  she  never  had  seen  it 
before.  She  had  looked  at  it  more  times  than 
she  could  count,  but  with  the  eyes  only.  She 
knew  what  it  was.  She  had  actually  watched  the 
coquettish  red-brick  building,  with  its  glass  dome 
and  white  Grecian  portico  rising  at  the  command 
of  the  great  philanthropist  whose  name  the 
building  bore;  but  she  had  never  been  conscious 
12  167 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  its  purpose  as  related  to  herself.  Now,  for 
the  first  time,  it  occurred  to  her  that  here  was  a 
place  where  a  reader  could  find  books. 

With  no  very  clear  idea  in  mind,  she  stepped 
within.  The  interior  was  hushed,  rather  awe- 
some, yet  sunny  and  sweetly  solemn  like  the 
temple  of  some  cheerful  god.  Finding  herself 
confronted  by  a  kindly,  bookish  little  lady 
seated  at  a  table  behind  a  wooden  barrier,  it 
was  obviously  Jennie's  duty  to  address  her. 

"I  wonder  if — if  I  could  borrow  a  book." 

She  was  informed  that  she  could  borrow  three 
books  at  a  time,  as  soon  as  certain  inquiries  as 
to  her  identity  and  residence  were  carried  out, 
and  this  would  take  a  few  days.  But  in  a  few 
days,  Jennie  knew  that  her  desire  to  read  might 
be  dead,  and  said  so.  The  object  of  the  library 
being  to  encourage  young  people  to  read  rather 
than  to  be  too  particular  about  their  addresses, 
the  kindly  little  lady,  after  some  consultation 
with  a  kindly  little  gentleman,  filled  out  Jennie's 
card. 

"What  sort  of  book  were  you  thinking  of?  A 
novel?" 

Jennie  said,  "Yes,"  if  it  was  a  good  one. 

"This  is  one  of  the  best,"  the  little  lady  went 
on,  pushing  forward  a  volume  that  happened  to 
be  lying  at  her  hand,  "if  you'd  care  to  take  it." 

It  was  The  Egoist,  by  George  Meredith,  and 
Jennie  accepted  it  as  something  foreordained. 

"You  could  have  two  more  books  if  you  wanted 
them — now  that  you're  here." 

1 68 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Jennie  made  a  plunge. 

"Have  you  anything  about — about  spires?" 

The  lady  smiled  gently. 

"About  church  spires?" 

The  girl  thought  it  was — chapel  spires — 
especially  French  ones. 

The  kindly  little  gentleman,  being  accustomed 
to  this  kind  of  search,  was  called  into  counsel. 

In  the  end  she  selected  a  work  on  the  old 
churches  of  Paris,  which  she  thought  might  give 
her  the  information  she  desired. 

"And  now  a  third  book?" 

Here  she  was  on  safer  ground.  The  English 
name  had  caught  her  ear  with  more  precision 
than  the  foreign  ones. 

"Have  you  got  anything  about  a  Lady 
Hamilton?" 

"You  mean  Romney's  Lady  Hamilton?" 

Again  there  was  an  echo  from  Jennie's  memory. 
Romney  was  the  man  who  couldn't  paint  her 
because  he  was  too  Georgian.  She  began  to  see 
how  Mrs.  Collingham  could  play  with  names  as 
she  might  with  tennis  balls.  Since  there  was 
everything  else  at  Marillo  Park,  there  must  also 
be  a  public  library. 

Arrived  at  home,  she  secreted  her  volumes 
under  her  bed.  She  could  read  at  night,  and  by 
scraps  in  the  daytime.  If  Ted  or  Gussie  were  to 
learn  that  she  was  trying  to  inform  her  mind, 
they  would  guy  her  with  as  little  mercy  as  if 
they  caught  her  in  that  still  more  offensive 
crime,  the  improvement  of  her  speech. 

169 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THAT  Bob  Collingham  was  at  ease  in  his  con- 
science as  to  sailing  to  South  America  and 
leaving  behind  him  an  unacknowledged  wife 
will  hardly  be  supposed;  but  the  true  situation 
did  not  present  itself  to  him  till  after  he  and 
Jennie  had  said  their  good-bys.  He  had  tried 
to  see  her  again  on  the  following  day  to  take 
counsel  as  to  the  immediate  publication  of  their 
marriage,  and  only  her  refusal  to  meet  him  had 
frustrated  that  intention.  But  the  more  he 
pondered  the  more  the  thing  he  had  done  seemed 
little  to  his  credit.  On  the  morning  of  the  day 
on  which  he  sailed,  he  rose  with  the  resolve  to 
tell  the  whole  truth  to  his  father. 

Had  he  known  the  facts,  that  Jennie  had 
actually  been  to  Collingham  Lodge,  that  his 
mother  knew  of  the  marriage,  that  his  father, 
without  knowing  of  the  marriage,  was  aware  of 
his  infatuation,  he  would  have  made  a  clean 
breast  of  it.  But  the  habit  of  domestic  life  being 
strong,  it  seemed  impossible  to  spring  the  con- 
fession in  the  middle  of  a  peaceful  breakfast. 
His  mother  had  come  down  to  the  table  for  this 
parting  meal  and  was  already  half  in  tears; 
his  father  concealed  a  genuine  emotion  behind 
the  morning  paper;  Edith  said  she  wondered 

170 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

what  would  happen  to  them  all  before  they  met 
again.  The  possibilities  evoked  were  so  sig- 
nificant that  the  mother  said,  sharply: 

"I  hope  it  may  be  God's  will  that  we  shall 
meet  exactly  as  we  are — a  united  family." 

"We  could  still  be  a  united  family,"  Edith 
ventured,  "and  not  meet  exactly  as  we  are." 

"Edith — please!"  her  mother  had  begged,  and 
Bob  felt  it  out  of  the  question  to  add  to  her  distress. 

Edith  having  driven  to  the  dock  with  his 
father  and  himself,  there  was  only  the  slightest 
opportunity  for  a  private  word  between  the 
father  and  the  son.  That  came  at  a  minute 
when  Edith  was  talking  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Huntley 
on  the  deck  of  the  Demerara. 

"Dad,"  Bob  asked,  awkwardly  and  abruptly, 
"do  you  feel  quite  at  ease  in  your  mind  as  to 
old  man  Follett?" 

Passengers  and  their  friends  were  pushing 
and  jostling.  Collingham  was  obliged  to  brace 
himself  against  the  rod  running  along  the  line  of 
cabins  before  he  could  reply. 

"Why  do  you  ask?" 

"Because  I  don't." 

"You  don't  with  regard  to  my  stand — or  with 
regard  to  your  own?" 

The  boy  looked  his  father  in  the  eyes. 

"With  regard  to  yours,  dad." 

"That's  very  kind  of  you,  Bob;  but  may  I 
suggest  that  you'll  have  all  you  can  do  in  repent- 
ing of  your  own  sins  without  trying,  in  addition, 
to  repent  of  mine?" 

171 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Nevertheless,  when  the  minute  came  the  part- 
ing was  affectionate.  Neither  father  nor  son 
was  satisfied  with  a  handshake.  Throwing 
their  arms  about  each  other,  they  kissed  as  in 
the  days  when  Bob  was  a  little  boy. 

Perhaps  it  was  the  warmth  of  this  farewell 
that  induced  the  father,  on  arriving  at  the  bank, 
to  ask  Miss  Ruddick  to  invite  Mr.  Bickley  to  the 
private  office  in  case  he  should  look  round  that 
afternoon.  Mr.  Bickley  did  look  round  that 
afternoon  and  was  accordingly  ushered  in. 

He  was  a  delicately  built  man  whose  appear- 
ance produced  that  effect  of  accuracy  you  get 
from  a  steel  trap.  Constructed  to  do  a  certain 
kind  of  work,  it  can  do  that  work  and  no  other. 
Two  minutes  after  Bickley  had  looked  at  a  man, 
he  knew  both  his  weak  points  and  his  aptitudes, 
and  could  tell  to  a  nicety  the  job  it  was  best  to 
put  him  to.  Forehead,  nose,  jaw,  lips,  eyes,  and 
ears  were  to  him  as  the  letters  of  the  alphabet. 
More  than  once  he  had  transferred  a  teller  to 
the  accounting  department,  or  made  an  ac- 
countant a  detective  by  his  reading  of  facial 
lines. 

Having  put  his  man  in  an  armchair  and  given 
him  one  of  the  Havanas  he  kept  for  social  inter- 
course, Collingham  waited  for  the  mellow  mo- 
ment when  the  cigar  was  smoked  to  half  its 
length. 

"Do  you  know,  Bickley,*'  he  said  then,  "I've 
never  been  quite  at  ease  in  my  mind  about  the 
way  we  shelved  that  old  fellow,  Follett.  It 

172 


seems  to  me  we  showed — well,  let  us  call  it  a 
want  of  consideration." 

Bickley's  eyes  measured  what  was  left  of  his 
cigar  as  he  held  it  out  before  him  horizontally. 

"Consideration  for  whom,  Mr.  Collingham?" 

"For  the  old  man  himself." 

"Oh,  I  didn't  know  but  what  you  were  going 
to  say  for  your  stockholders."  Before  the  banker 
could  parry  this  thrust,  the  expert  went  on: 
"I  looked  in  yesterday  at  the  court  room  where 
they  were  trotting  out  that  fellow  Nicholson  of 
the  Wyndham  National.  If  they'd  ever  asked 
me,  I  could  have  told  them  long  ago  that  they'd 
lose  money  by  him  in  the  end." 

"Oh,  but  Follett  isn't  in  that  box." 

"He  is,  if  you  drop  money  by  him.  I'm  speak- 
ing not  of  the  ways  you  drop  money  by  a  man, 
but  only  of  the  fact  that  you  drop  it.  Your 
business,  I  suppose,  Mr.  Collingham,  is  to  make 
money  for  your  shareholders  and  yourself.  It's 
to  help  out  that,  I  take  it,  that  you  send  for  me 
and  go  by  my  advice." 

"Then  you'd  class  Follett  and  Nicholson 
together?" 

"I  don't  class  them  at  all.  Whether  a  man 
steals  the  bank's  money  or  you  give  it  to  him  as 
a  gift  isn't  to  the  point.  My  job  is  over  when  I 
tell  you  that  he  gets  what  he  doesn't  earn.  The 
rest,  Mr.  Collingham,  is  up  to  you — or  the  dis- 
trict attorney,  as  the  case  may  be." 

"I'm  afraid  I  don't  see  it  that  way.'* 

"It's  your  affair,  Mr.  Collingham,  not  mine. 
173 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

I  only  venture  to  remind  you  that  we've  had  this 
little  tussle  over  almost  every  man  we've  ever 
bounced.  It  does  great  credit  to  your  kindness 
of  heart,  and  if  you  want  to  go  on  supporting 
Follett  and  his  family  for  the  rest  of  your  life — 

Collingham  winced  at  this  hint  that  his  kind- 
ness of  heart  was  greater  than  his  business  capac- 
ity. It  was  a  point  at  which  he  always  felt 
himself  vulnerable. 

"  Speaking  of  Follett's  family,"  he  said,  gliding 
away  from  the  main  topic,  "we've  got  that  boy 
of  his  here.  How  is  he  getting  on?" 

"Ah,  there  you  have  a  horse  of  another  color. 
My  first  report  on  him  was  not  so  favorable; 
but  now  that  we've  knocked  the  high  jinks  out 
of  him—" 

"Oh,  we've  done  that,  have  we?" 

"He's  on  the  way  to  become  a  valuable  boy. 
Good  worker,  cheery,  likable.  If  he  can  get  over 
his  one  defect,  he'll  be  worth  hanging  on  to." 

"And  his  one  defect  is — " 

"Liable  to  get  excited  and  lose  his  head. 
Type  to  see  red  in  a  fight,  and  do  something 
dangerous." 

Unaware  of  the  effort  which  his  former  em- 
ployer's good  will  was  vainly  putting  forth  on 
his  behalf,  Josiah  arrived  in  front  of  his  pair  of 
grassplots  in  Indiana  Avenue.  It  was  a  trim 
little  place,  meeting  all  the  wishes  for  a  roof 
above  his  head  which  his  soul  had  ever  formed. 
He  stood  and  looked  at  it,  thinking  of  the  days 

174 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

when  little  Gladys  used  to  play  "house"  be- 
neath one  of  the  umbrella-shaped  hydrangea 
bushes. 

That  was  not  so  long  ago — only  six  or  eight 
years.  It  was  nine  since  he  had  bought  Number 
Eleven,  paying  out  three  thousand  dollars  that 
had  come  to  him  from  a  matured  twenty  years' 
endowment  policy,  together  with  another  thou- 
sand Lizzie  had  inherited  from  an  aunt.  They 
had  thought  it  a  good  investment  because,  if 
the  worst  ever  came  to  the  worst — and  they 
didn't  know  what  they  meant  by  that — they 
would  always  have  a  home.  Now  the  home  was 
in  danger  because  he  couldn't  raise  a  hundred 
and  forty-seven  dollars  and  sixty-three  cents. 
He  had  been  everywhere  trying  to  borrow  more, 
and  he  had  failed.  He  had  got  to  the  point 
where  his  acquaintances  in  the  different  offices 
were  putting  him  down  as  an  "old  bum."  To 
Josiah,  knowing  all  the  shades  of  meaning  in 
the  term,  it  was  a  dreadful  name  as  applied  to 
himself;  and  he  had  heard  it  that  very  after- 
noon. An  old  friend,  who  had  promised  to  lend 
him  five  of  the  hundred  and  fifteen  already 
raised,  had  said  on  seeing  him  approach: 

"Here  comes  that  old  bum  again." 

Josiah  had  turned  about  there  and  then. 
Giving  up  trying  any  more  to  raise  the  hundred 
and  forty-seven,  he  had  wandered  home.  He, 
Josiah  Follett,  an  old  bum! 

Having  hidden  her  three  volumes  under  the 
bed,  Jennie  looked  out  and  saw  him.  He  didn't 

175 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

look  specially  dejected,  yet  she  knew  he  was. 
She  knew  it  by  the  way  he  stared  at  the  hy- 
drangea bush,  or  by  the  fact  that  he  had  re- 
nounced his  search  for  another  job  so  early  in 
the  afternoon.  Like  herself,  he  seemed  thrown 
on  his  own  resources  for  company,  finding  little 
or  nothing  tRere.  She  ran  down  to  meet  him. 
She  would  do  that  rare  thing  in  the  Follett 
family,  take  him  for  a  walk. 

He  turned  with  her  obediently.  It  was  a  relief 
to  him  not  to  be  obliged  to  go  in  at  once  and  tell 
Lizzie  he  had  no  good  news.  Lizzie  was  still  his 
great  referee,  as  he  was  hers.  The  children  were 
still  the  children,  not  to  be  taken  into  confidence 
till  there  was  nothing  else  to  be  done. 

But  this  afternoon  life,  for  the  first  time, 
looked  different.  It  was  as  if,  unaided,  he 
couldn't  carry  the  burden  any  more.  There 
were  younger  shoulders  than  his,  and  perhaps 
it  was  time  now  to  call  on  them  to  share  the 
task. 

"I'm  an  old  man,  Jennie,"  he  said,  as  they 
began  to  move  slowly  toward  Palisade  Walk. 
"I  haven't  felt  old  till  lately;  but  now — now 
I'm  all  in.  I  don't  suppose  I'll  ever  get  a  chance 
to  do  a  day's  work  again." 

When  she  rallied  him  on  this,  he  told  her  the 
story  of  his  day,  omitting  the  "  old  bum  "  incident. 
He  must  spare  his  children  that,  even  if  he 
couldn't  have  been  spared  himself. 

This  tale,  delivered  without  emphasis,  was 
more  terrible  to  Jennie  than  all  the  pangs  of 

176 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

conscience.  Had  she  but  been  true  to  the 
promises  made  to  Mrs.  Collingham,  she  could 
have  said,  "Father  dear,  you'll  never  have  to 
worry  any  more."  Two  hours  earlier,  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  had  been  within  her  grasp, 
and  she  had  let  it  go.  "All  that  money,"  she 
sighed  to  herself,  "and  love!" 

But  since  it  would  be  within  her  grasp  to- 
morrow, a  new  thought  came  to  her.  The  hun- 
dred dollars  she  would  ultimately  return  to  Bob 
need  not  be  in  exactly  the  same  bills.  There  was 
no  reason  why  she  should  not  use  this  amount 
and  restore  it  from  the  wealth  to  come.  Bob 
couldn't  possibly  tell  the  difference  between  the 
paper  that  made  up  one  sum  of  a  hundred  dollars 
and  the  paper  that  made  up  another.  She 
would  have  preferred  to  hand  it  back  without 
touching  it,  but,  in  view  of  the  family  need, 
fastidiousness  was  out  of  place. 

As  they  emerged  into  Palisade  Walk  and  the 
vast  panorama  lay  below  them,  she  slipped  her 
arm  through  his. 

"Daddy,"  she  said,  caressingly,  "what  should 
you  say  if  you  saw  me  with  a  hundred  dollars?" 

To  Josiah,  it  was  the  kind  of  question  children 
ask  when  their  imaginations  go  off  on  flights. 
It  would  have  been  the  same  thing  had  she  said 
a  thousand  or  a  million.  Nevertheless,  he  re- 
plied, more  gravely  than  she  had  expected: 

"What  should  I  say,  my  dear?  I  should  say 
you  couldn't  have  come  by  it  honestly." 

"Oh,  but  if  I  could?"   ' 
177 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"It's  no  use  talking  about  that,  my  dear, 
because  I  know  you  couldn't.  If  you  had  a 
hundred  dollars,  some  man  would  have  given  it 
to  you,  and  no  man  would  give  it  to  you 
unless — " 

He  didn't  finish  the  sentence,  because  she 
hurried  on  ahead.  He  reached  her  only  when 
she  stood  still,  looking  down  on  the  river,  to 
spring  the  question  prepared  on  second  thoughts. 

"But,  daddy,  if  I  had  a  hundred  dollars,  you'd 
use  it  for  the  taxes — wouldn't  you? — even  if  I 
hadn't  got  it  honestly." 

A  spasm  crossed  his  face.  He  laid  his  hand 
on  her  shoulder  roughly.  She  could  think  of 
nothing  but  the  stern  father  of  a  wayward  girl 
as  she  had  seen  him  pictured  in  the  movies. 
She  hadn't  supposed  that  such  dramatic  parents 
existed  off'  the  screen. 

"Jennie,  you  haven't  got  a  hundred  dollars! 
Tell  me  you  haven't!  Don't  let  me  think  that 
the  worst  thing  of  all  has  overtaken  us." 

Amazed  as  she  was,  her  feminine  quick- 
wittedness  came  to  her  aid. 

"Oh,  you  funny  daddy!"  she  laughed,  drawing 
his  hand  from  her  shoulder  and  again  slipping 
it  through  her  arm.  "You're  not  a  bit  good  at 
making  pretend." 

"Excuse  me,  my  dear,"  he  said,  humbly,  as 
they  strolled  on  once  more.  "I'm  a  little  nerv- 
ous. I  don't  suppose  I'll  ever  get  a  chance  to 
do  a  day's  work  again." 

Jennie,  too,  was  a  little  nervous,  though  she 
178 


:    • 


''JENNIE,  YOU  HAVEN'T  GOT  A  HUNDRED  DOLLARS!    TELL  ME 
YOU  HAVEN'T!" 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

did  her  best  to  hide  the  fact.  She  had  not  ex- 
pected him  to  take  this  tragically  moral  point 
of  view.  It  made  so  many  new  complications 
as  to  her  twenty-five  thousand  that  she  didn't 
know  where  she  stood.  Her  mother  might  agree 
with  him.  Teddy  and  the  girls  might  agree 
with  her.  To  act  in  opposition  to  them  all  was 
outside  her  sphere  of  contemplation. 

Indiana  Avenue  was  indeed  not  so  primitive 
but  that  the  subject  of  ladies  who  chose  their 
own  way  was  frequently  under  discussion,  and 
Jennie  had  never  heard  much  condemnation  of 
this  liberty  except  where  the  associations  were 
considered  "low."  Where,  on  the  contrary,  the 
situation  was  on  a  large  financial  scale  and 
carried  with  a  lordly  hand,  opinion,  while  not 
approving,  was  in  a  measure  deferential.  It  was 
no  secret  that  Mrs.  Inglis  had  a  sister,  mysteri- 
ously known  as  "Mrs.  Deramore,"  whose  career 
had  been  of  the  most  romantic;  and  whenever 
her  limousine  drove  up  to  the  Inglis  door,  as  it  did 
perhaps  twice  a  year,  all  the  women  crowded 
to  the  windows  to  see  the  fair  occupant  get  in  and 
out.  On  one  occasion  Jennie  had  heard  her 
mother  say  to  their  next-door  neighbor,  Mrs. 
Weatherby,  "After  all,  with  the  kind  of  world 
we've  got  to-day,  why  shouldn't  she?" 

Jennie  had  not  thought  of  herself  as  a 
second  Mrs.  Deramore.  She  had  hardly 
thought  of  herself  at  all.  The  combination  of 
Hubert,  love,  and  the  family  deliverance  from 
penury  had  precluded  speculation  as  to  what 

179 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

she  might  become.  She  made  no  attempt  to  call 
up  this  vision  even  now.  The  irony  of  a  situation 
in  which  she  had  a  small  fortune  tucked  away 
in  the  glove-and-hand kerchief  box  in  her  top 
bureau  drawer,  and  yet  was  helpless  to  make 
use  of  it,  was  enough  for  her  to  deal  with. 

Palisade  Walk  is  protected  by  a  row  of  small, 
irregular,  upright  boulders  like  the  dragon's 
teeth.  At  a  spot  where  a  low  flat  stone  forms  a 
seat  between  two  granite  cones  Jennie  sat  down 
sidewise  to  the  river,  to  think  her  situation  out. 
Josiah,  too,  came  to  a  standstill,  leaning  on  the 
stick  which  lifelong  British  habit  put  into  his 
hands  whenever  he  went  out-of-doors,  and 
gazing  at  a  scene  whose  very  mightiness  smote 
him  through  and  through  with  a  sense  of  his 
futility. 

It  was  a  view  of  New  York  which  few  New 
Yorkers  know  to  exist,  and  which  those  who 
know  it  to  exist  mainly  ignore.  Rio  from  the 
Pao  d'Assucar,  Montreal  from  Mount  Royal, 
Quebec  from  the  St.  Lawrence,  San  Francisco 
from  the  Golden  Gate,  are  all  of  the  earth,  earthy. 
Manhattan  as  viewed  from  the  Hudson's  western 
bank  is  like  the  city  which  rose  when  Apollo 
sang,  or  that  beheld  in  the  Apocalypse  of  John. 

From  the  dragon's  teeth,  the  precipice  broke 
in  terraces  and  shelves  hung  with  ash,  sumach, 
and  stunted  oak.  Wherever  there  was  a  hand's 
breadth  of  soil,  a  dandelion  or  a  violet,  a  butter- 
cup or  a  lady-fern,  nestled  in  the  keeping  of  the 
cliff  as  a  bird's  nest  on  a  branch.  Creepers  and 

1 80 


vines  threw  their  tangles  of  tassels  down  to 
where  the  chimneys  clustering  along  the  river's 
brink  blackened  them  with  smoke.  Small 
water-worn  docks,  sheltering  nameless  craft, 
battered,  ancient,  and  grotesque,  crept  in  and 
out  among  factories  and  coal  yards,  linking  up 
with  one  another  in  a  line  of  some  twenty  miles. 
Straight  as  the  cut  of  a  knife,  the  river  clove  its 
tremendous  gash  from  Adirondacks  to  Atlantic — 
a  leaden,  shimmering,  storied  streak,  too  deep 
within  its  bed  to  catch  the  westering  sunlight. 
The  westering  sunlight  itself  was  silvered  in  the 
perpetual  misty  haze  hanging  over  the  island 
like  an  aureole,  through  which  the  city  glimmered 
in  mile  after  mile  of  gable  and  spire,  of  dome 
and  cube,  silent,  suspended,  heavenly. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  world  like  this  cloud- 
built  vision  garlanded  along  the  sky.  No  sound 
breaks  from  it,  no  sign  of  our  earth-born  life. 
The  steel-blue-gray  of  a  gull's  wing  swooping 
above  the  water  is  gross  as  compared  with  its 
texture.  The  violet  and  the  lady-fern  are  not  so 
delicate  as  the  substance  of  its  palaces.  It 
might  be  dream;  it  might  be  mirage;  it  might 
be  the  city  which  came  down  from  God  as  a 
bride  adorned  for  her  husband.  Beginning  too 
far  away  for  the  eye  to  reach,  and  ending  where 
the  gaze  can  no  longer  follow,  it  is  immense 
and  yet  aerial,  a  towered,  battlemented,  mighty 
thing,  yet  spun  of  the  ether  between  the  worlds. 

Though  Jennie  and  her  father  had  looked  at 
this  mystic  wraith  of  a  city  so  often  that  they 

181 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

hardly  noticed  it  any  more,  they  were  never 
free  from  its  ecstatic  influence.  That  is,  it  moved 
them  to  aspirations  without  suggesting  the 
objective  to  which  they  should  aspire.  Caught 
in  the  web  of  daily  circumstance,  entangled, 
enmeshed,  helplessly  captive  amid  hand-to- 
mouth  necessities,  their  thoughts  were  rarely 
at  liberty  to  wander  from  the  definite  calculation 
as  to  how  to  live.  They  didn't  so  wander  even 
now.  Even  now,  lifted  up  as  they  were  among 
spiritual  splendors,  food,  clothes,  gas,  taxes,  and 
the  mortgage  were  the  things  most  heavily  on 
their  minds;  but  something  else  stirred  in  them 
with  a  sluggish  will  to  live. 

"Jennie,  do  you  believe  in  God?" 
For  a  minute  Jennie  gazed  sidewise  at  the 
celestial  city  in  the  air  and  made  no  answer. 
Josiah  himself  hardly  knew  why  he  had  asked 
the  question  unless  it  was  because  of  vague  new 
fears  as  to  Jennie's  associations.  Of  these  he 
knew  almost  as  little  as  the  parent  bird  of  its 
offspring's  doings  when  the  young  have  taken 
flight.  This  was  the  custom  of  the  family,  the 
custom  of  the  country.  But  he  had  never  been 
free  from  misgivings  that  Jennie's  calling  of 
artist's  model  was  "not  respectable,"  and  now 
this  mention  of  a  hundred  dollars,  even  though 
it  were  but  in  jest,  roused  some  little-used  sense 
of  paternal  responsibility. 

"I  don't  know  that  I  do,"  Jennie  said,  at  last. 
She  added,  after  another  minute's  thought, 
"What's  the  good  of  God,  anyhow?" 

182 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"People  say  he  can  take  you  to  heaven  when 
you  die,  or  send  you  to  the  other  place." 

"I'm  not  worrying  about  what  will  happen 
when  I  die;  I've  got  all  I  can  attend  to  here. 
Can  God  help  me  about  that?" 

It  was  the  test  question  of  Josiah's  inner  life. 
His  faith  stood  or  fell  by  it.  He  would  have 
been  glad  to  tell  his  child  that  she  could  be  aided 
in  her  earthly  problems,  but,  unlike  Job,  hadn't 
he  himself  served  God  for  naught? 

"He  don't  seem  able  to  do  that,  my  dear," 
he  sighed,  as  if  the  confession  of  unbelief  forced 
its  way  out  in  spite  of  himself. 

"Well,  then" — Jennie  rose,  wearily — "what's 
the  use  ?  If  God  can  put  me  off  till  I  die,  I  sup- 
pose I  can  put  him  off  in  the  same  way,  can't  I  ? 
Do  you  believe  in  him,  yourself,  daddy?" 

"I  used  to." 

And  that  was  all  he  could  say. 

As  the  sun  sank  farther  into  the  west,  the 
celestial  city  which  had  hitherto  been  of  a 
luminous  white  was  shot  with  rose  and  saffron. 
Within  its  heart  lay  Broadway,  Fifth  Avenue, 
Wall  Street,  and  the  Bowery,  shops,  churches, 
brothels,  and  banks,  all  passions,  hungers,  yearn- 
ings, and  ambitions,  all  national  tendencies 
worthy  and  detestable,  all  human  instincts  holy 
and  unclean,  all  loveliness,  all  lust,  all  charity, 
all  cupidity,  all  secret  and  suppressed  desire, 
all  shameless  exposure  on  the  housetops,  all  sor- 
row, all  sin,  all  that  the  soul  of  man  conceives  of 
evil  and  good — and  yet,  with  no  more  than  these 
13  183 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

few  miles  of  perspective  and  this  easy  play  of 
light  translated  into  beauty,  uplifting,  un- 
earthly, and  ineffable. 

For  a  minute  longer  Jennie  and  her  father 
looking  on  the  vision  as  it  melted  from  glory  to 
glory  in  this  pageantry  of  sky.  Then,  with  arms 
linked  as  before,  they  turned  their  backs  on  it. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

FOR  the  next  twenty-four  hours  Jennie  did 
her  best  to  suspend  the  operation  of  thought. 
Thought  got  her  nowhere.  It  led  her  into  so 
many  blind  alleys  that  it  made  her  head  ache. 
She  had  once  heard  a  returned  traveler  describe 
his  efforts  to  get  out  of  the  labyrinth  at  Hampton 
Court,  and  felt  herself  now  in  the  same  situation. 
Each  way  seemed  easy  till  she  followed  it  and 
found  herself  balked  by  a  hedge. 

But  the  fact  that  her  head  ached  gave  her  an 
excuse  for  going  to  her  room  and  locking  herself 
in.  She  could  thus  pull  her  books  from  beneath 
the  bed  without  fear  of  detection.  The  points 
as  to  which  she  needed  enlightenment  being 
spires  and  Lady  Hamilton,  she  went  at  her  task 
with  the  avidity  of  a  starving  person  at  sight  of 
food. 

As  to  spires,  she  was  quickly  appeased,  for  her 
volume  on  the  old  churches  of  Paris  had  the 
Sainte-Chapelle  as  its  frontispiece.  Now  that 
she  had  seen  the  name  in  print,  she  was  sure  of 
it.  Because  of  being  so  little  taxed,  her  memory 
was  the  more  retentive.  Every  sound  that  had 
fallen  from  Mrs.  Collingham's  lips  was  stamped 
on  her  mind  like  a  footprint  hardened  into  rock 
on  a  bit  of  untracked  soil.  Within  half  an  hour, 

185 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

she  had  learned  the  outlines  of  the  history  of 
the  Sainte-Chapelle,  and,  with  some  fluttering 
of  timid  vanity,  had  grasped  the  comparison  of 
its  strong  and  exquisite  grace  with  her  own 
personality. 

But,  after  all,  the  Sainte-Chapelle  was  a  thing 
of  stone,  whereas  Lady  Hamilton — she  loved, 
the  name — must  have  been  of  flesh  and  blood. 
Here,  too,  there  was  a  frontispiece,  the  very 
Dian  of  the  Frick  Gallery  to  which  Mrs.  Col- 
lingham  had  referred.  Unfortunately,  the  illus- 
trations were  in  black  and  white,  so  that  she 
could  get  no  adequate  idea  as  to  the  complexion 
or  the  color  of  the  hair.  The  face,  however,  with 
its  bewitching  softness,  its  heavenly  archnesses, 
bore  some  resemblance  to  her  own. 

It  was  a  shock  to  learn  that  the  possessor  of 
so  much  beauty,  the  bearer  of  so  melodious  a 
title,  had  begun  life  as  Emma  Lyon,  a  servant 
girl,  but,  after  all,  she  reflected,  the  circumstance 
only  created  analogies  with  herself.  There  were 
more  analogies  still.  Emma  Lyon  had  been  an 
artist's  model.  In  an  artist's  studio  she  had 
made  the  acquaintance  of  men  of  lofty  station, 
just  as  she  herself  h<id  met  Bob.  She  had  loved 
and  been  loved.  Romney  was  perhaps  her 
Hubert  Wray.  Her  career  had  been  excit- 
ing and  dramatic — the  friend  of  a  queen,  the 
more-than-wife  of  one  of  the  great  men  of  the 
age.  The  tragic,  miserable  death  didn't  frighten 
Jennie,  since  misery  and  tragedy  always  stalked 
on  the  edge  of  her  experience.  She  fell  asleep 

186 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

amid  vast,  vague  concepts  of  queens  and  heroes 
beset  with  loves  and  problems  not  unlike  Jennie 
Follett's. 

All  through  the  next  day  she  stilled  the  working 
of  thought  by  application  to  The  Egoist.  She 
took  to  it  as  to  a  drug.  In  the  intervals  of  her 
household  duties,  or  whenever  her  mind  became 
active  over  her  affairs,  she  ran  to  her  room  to 
begin  again,  "Comedy  is  a  game  played  to  throw 
reflections  upon  social  life,  and  it  deals  with  hu- 
man nature  in  the  drawing-room  of  civilized 
men  and  women,  where  we  have  no  dust  of  the 
struggling  outer  world,  no  mire,  no  violent 
clashes,  to  make  the  correctness  of  the  represen- 
tation convincing."  She  got  little  farther,  since, 
for  her  purpose,  this  was  far  enough.  She  was 
drugged  already,  as  by  dentist's  gas.  The  more 
she  read  the  more  she  felt  herself  wandering  sleepily 
through  realms  of  dream,  where  words,  as  she 
understood  them,  had  ceased  to  have  significance. 

So,  by  sheer  force  of  will,  she  brought  herself 
to  that  moment  in  the  afternoon  when  she  stood 
at  the  studio  door.  She  hadn't  thought;  she 
hadn't,  in  her  own  phrase,  imagined.  She  had 
allowed  herself  no  instant  in  which  to  count  the 
cost  or  to  shrink  from  paying  it.  Hubert,  love, 
and  the  family  deliverance  from  poverty  would 
be  hers  before  nightfall,  and  she  meant  not  to 
look  beyond.  She  opened  the  door  softly. 

Before  showing  herself,  she  stopped  and 
listened.  There  was  not  a  sound.  It  was  often 
so  if  Hubert  was  painting,  and  the  silence  only 

187 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

assured  her  that  if  he  was  there,  as  he  probably 
was,  he  was  waiting  for  her  alone.  He  was 
waiting  for  her  alone  with  that  look  in  his  eyes, 
that  maddened  animal  look  which  she  had  seen 
yesterday,  so  bestial  and  yet  so  compelling! 
Still  more  softly  she  moved  forward  among  thi 
studio  odds  and  ends. 

Then  she  saw — and  stopped. 

In  the  Byzantine  chair,  a  nude  woman,  seated 
in  the  manner  of  the  Egyptian  cat-goddess,  was 
holding  up  a  skull.  Though  the  woman  looked 
the  other  way,  Jennie  could  see  her  as  a  lovely 
creature,  straight,  strong,  triumphant,  and  un- 
ashamed. Hubert  was  painting,  busily,  eagerly. 
He  raised  his  eyes,  saw  Jennie  as  she  cowered, 
took  no  notice  of  her  at  all,  and  went  on  with 
his  work.  It  passed  all  that  she  had  ever  imag- 
ined of  cruelty  that,  as  she  turned  to  make  her 
way  out  again,  he  should  glance  up  once  more — 
and  let  her  go. 

Hubert — and  the  woman  dressed  like  that! 
The  woman  dressed  like  that — in  this  intimacy 
with  Hubert!  She  herself  shut  out — cast  out — 
sent  to  the  devil!  Some  one  else  in  her  place, 
when  she  might  so  easily  have  kept  it! 

Jennie's  suffering  was  in  the  dry  and  stony 
stage  at  which  it  hardly  seemed  suffering  at  all. 
Yes,  it  did;  she  knew  it  was  suffering — only,  she 
couldn't  feel.  She  could  think  lucidly  and  yet 
put  the  whole  situation  away  from  her  for  the 
reason  that  it  would  keep.  Anguish  would  keep; 
tears  would  keep.  She  could  postpone  every- 

188 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

thing,  since  she  had  all  the  rest  of  her  life  to  give 
to  its  contemplation.  Just  for  the  present,  the 
memory  of  the  woman  in  the  chair  with  Hubert 
looking  at  her  was  so  scorching  to  the  mind  that 
she  could  do  nothing  but  snatch  her  faculties 
away  from  it. 

Coming  to  Fifth  Avenue  and  seeing  an  electric 
bus  stop  near  the  curb,  she  climbed  into  it. 
It  was  the  old  story  of  not  knowing  where  to  go 
or  what  to  do  once  her  simple  round  of  habits 
had  been  upset.  Snuggled  close  to  a  window, 
she  could  at  least  be  jolted  along  without  effort 
of  her  own  while  she  still  fought  off  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  frightful  thing  that  had  hap- 
pened. It  was  not  merely  Hubert  and  the 
woman;  it  was  everything.  So  much  was 
included  that  she  couldn't  bear  to  think  of  this 
ruin  to  her  beautiful  house  of  cards. 

Such  wealth  and  beauty  in  the  shop  windows! 
Such  streams  of  people  in  their  new  spring 
clothes!  She  had  heard  it  said  that  every  heart 
had  its  bitterness,  but  she  didn't  think  that 
that  could  be  possible.  If  everyone  had  a  heart- 
ache like  hers,  or  even  the  memory  of  such  a 
heartache,  it  would  make  too  monstrous  a  world, 
too  deplorable  a  human  race.  After  all,  there 
must  be  some  sense  in  the  presence  of  mankind 
on  earth,  and  if  all  were  kicked  about  and  bruised, 
there  would  be  none.  She  preferred  to  think  that 
the  people  on  the  pavements  and  in  the  limousines 
were  as  happy  as  they  looked,  and  that  she  alone 
was  selected  for  bewilderment  and  pain. 

189 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

She  wondered  where  she  was  going.  There 
was  a  ferry  far  up  on  the  Riverside  Drive  which 
would  take  her  across  to  New  Jersey,  and  thence, 
by  a  combination  of  trolley-cars,  she  could  work 
her  way  southward  to  Pemberton  Heights. 
This  would  consume  an  hour  and  more,  and  so 
eat  up  part  of  the  afternoon.  What  she  would 
do  when  she  arrived  home  with  her  dreams  all 
shattered  God  alone  knew.  If  she  could  only 
have  seen  her  friend,  Mrs.  Collingham,  clinging 
to  that  kind  hand  as  she  poured  out  her  heart. .  . . 

Just  then  a  huge  building  came  into  sight  on 
the  left,  and  with  it  a  new  impulse.  She  had 
often  meant  to  visit  it,  though  the  day  never 
seemed  to  come.  Gussie  had  once  gone  to  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  in  company  with  Sadie 
Inglis,  since  when  she  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
saying  that  she  had  as  good  as  taken  a  trip 
abroad.  Jennie  didn't  want  a  trip  abroad;  she 
wanted  soothing,  comforting,  affection.  She 
wanted  another  drop  of  that  experienced,  wo- 
manly sympathy,  instinct  with  kindliness  and 
knowledge  of  the  world  which  she  had  tasted 
for  the  first  and  only  time  on  that  blissful  after- 
noon at  Collingham  Lodge. 

It  was  to  get  nearer  to  Collingham  Lodge  that 
she  left  the  bus  to  drag  herself  up  the  long  flight 
of  steps  and  into  the  vast,  cool  hall.  There  were 
others  going  in,  chiefly  the  Slavs  and  Italians  for 
whom  she  felt  a  legitimate  Anglo-Saxon  con- 
tempt, so  that  she  had  nothing  to  do  but  to 
follow  them.  Thus  she  found  herself  at  the  top 

190 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  another  long  flight  of  steps,  gazing  about  her 
in  an  awe  that  soon  became  an  intoxicating  sense 
of  beauty. 

It  was  Jennie's  first  approach  to  beauty  on 
this  scale  of  immensity  and  variety.  It  was  her 
first  draught  of  Art.  Her  childhood's  poring 
over  Ancient  Rome  Restored  had  given  her  a 
feeling  for  line  and  economy,  but  she  had  never 
dreamed  that  color,  substance,  and  texture  could 
be  used  with  this  daring,  profuse  creativeness. 
Having  no  ability  to  seize  details,  she  drifted 
helplessly  up  and  down  aisles  of  splendor  and 
gleam.  Here  there  were  gold  and  silver,  here  was 
tapestry,  here  crystal,  here  enamel.  The  pic- 
tures were  endless,  endless.  She  could  no  more 
deal  with  them  than  with  a  sunset.  Life  came  to 
the  Scarborough  tradition  in  her  as  it  does  to  a 
frozen  limb,  with  distress  and  yet  with  an  ele- 
ment of  ecstasy.  A  soul  that  had  passed  to  a 
higher  plane  of  existence,  whom  there  was  no 
one  to  welcome  and  guide,  might  have  ventured 
timidly  into  the  celestial  land  as  Jennie  among 
these  lovely  things  outside  her  comprehension. 

She  came  to  herself,  as  it  were,  on  hearing  a 
man's  voice  say,  in  a  kind  of  tone  and  idiom  with 
which  she  was  familiar: 

"Have  you  looked  at  this  Cellini  now?  That's 
the  only  authentic  bit  of  Cellini  in  the  United 
States.  There's  six  or  seven  other  pieces  in 
different  museums  that  people  says  is  Cellini, 
but  there's  always  a  hitch  in  the  proof." 

Turning,  she  saw  a  stocky  man  in  custodian's 
191 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

uniform  who  was  addressing  a  group  of  Italians, 
two  bareheaded  women,  three  children  between 
ten  and  fifteen,  and  a  man.  All  were  interested. 
All  studied  the  gold  shell  with  its  dragon-shaped 
handle  in  purplish  enamel.  They  commented, 
criticized,  appraised,  even  the  children  pointing 
out  excellencies  to  one  another.  When  they  had 
drifted  away,  Jennie  turned  to  the  kindly  Irish- 
man, who,  by  dint  of  living  with  beauty,  had 
grasped  its  spirit,  and  put  a  hesitating  question. 
She  asked  him  to  repeat  the  name  of  the  gold- 
smith, pronouncing  it  after  him  till  she  registered 
it  on  her  mind  as  she  had  that  of  Lady  Hamilton. 

"Sure,  there  was  an  artist  for  you,"  the  cus- 
todian went  on.  "The  breed  is  dead  and  gone. 
Hot-timpered  fellow,  though.  Had  more  mis- 
tresses and  killed  more  men  than  you  could 
count.  Should  read  about  him  in  a  book  he 
wrote  himself."  He  looked  at  Jennie  from  the 
corner  of  an  eye,  accustomed  to  "size  up"  an 
individual  here  and  there  among  the  thousands 
who  floated  daily  through  his  little  domain, 
apparently  finding  in  her  something  that  merited 
further  favors.  "Are  you  wise  to  this  Memling  ? " 
he  asked,  leading  the  way  to  a  corner  of  the  wall 
where  hung  a  small  portrait.  "There's  only  two 
other  men  in  the  wor-rld  that  could  have  painted 
that  head,  and  that's  Holbein  and  Rembrandt. 
Memling  himself  never  did  it  but  just  that 
wance." 

Jennie  looked,  registering  Memling's  name. 
It  was  the  head  of  an  elderly  man;  so  living, 

192 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

kindly,  and  humorous  that  she  loved  him. 
When  she  turned  to  her  guide  he  stood  with  a 
smile  of  curiosity,  like  that  of  a  mother  showing 
her  baby  to  a  friend. 

"What  d'ye  say  to  that  now?" 

Jennie  said  what  she  could — that  it  was  mar- 
velous, but  that  she  didn't  know  anything  about 
art.  Since  he  was  so  kind,  she  ventured,  how- 
ever, on  another  question.  Did  the  museum 
contain  a  portrait  of  Lady  Hamilton? 

He  pursed  up  his  nose.  Not  a  good  one.  Not 
a  Romney.  There  was  one  in  gallery  twenty- 
four,  but  it  was  by  John  Opie,  of  whom  he  had 
no  high  opinion.  In  comparison  with  Romney, 
he  thought  Opie  big  and  coarse,  but,  since  there 
was  nothing  better  to  be  seen,  Jennie  might 
choose  to  glance  at  this  second-rate  specimen. 

"And  I'll  tell  you  another  thing,"  he  went  on, 
confidentially.  "You're  not  used  to  looking  at 
pictures  and  such  like,  are  you,  now?" 

Jennie  said  she  was  not. 

"Well,  then,  go  to  gallery  twenty-four.  Find 
your  Opie,  which  you'll  see  hanging  over  one  of 
the  doors — and  don't  look  at  annything  else. 
You'll  have  seen  all  you  can  absor-rb  in  wan 
day.  Come  back  to-morrer,  or  anny  other  toime, 
and  come  straight  to  me.  You'll  find  me  here, 
and  I'll  tell  you  what  to  look  at  next.  But  don't 
take  more  to-day  than  you  can  enjoy." 

He  walked  with  her  till  she  reached  the 
boundary  of  his  realm. 

"You  look  like  a  gur-rl  that  'd  have  an  eye  and 
193 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

a  taste  for  beauty.  You  don't  find  them  often 
among  Americans,  and  when  you  do  it's  a  god- 
send. Poles,  Jews,  Russians,  yes.  When  the 
French  and  Italian  officers  was  in  New  York, 
their  eyes  'd  fairly  eat  the  museum  up.  But 
Americans — they  don't  know  and  they  don't 
want  to  know — not  wan  in  a  hundred  thousand. 
Well,  good-day  to  you  and  good  luck.  I'm  always 
here,  and  I'm  just  the  wan  to  tell  you  which  is 
the  things  to  pick  out." 

But  by  the  time  she  discovered  her  Lady 
Hamilton  she  had  only  the  courage  to  note 
listlessly  that  the  hair  was  somewhat  the  color 
of  her  own — not  chestnut,  not  russet,  not  copper, 
not  red-gold,  but  perhaps  a  combination  of  them 
all.  She  had  reached  her  limitations  unex- 
pectedly. The  tide  she  had  dammed  had  burst 
its  barriers  and  rushed  in  on  her.  She  sank  to 
a  chair  in  the  middle  of  the  almost  empty  room, 
her  eyes  blinded  by  sudden  tears. 

Hubert  was  still  with  that  woman!  The 
woman  was  perhaps  resting  now  and  they  were 
talking!  She  would  be  so  much  at  her  ease  that 
she  would  talk  without  taking  the  trouble  to 
throw  her  wrap  round  her.  Hubert,  too,  would 
be  at  ease,  preferring  her  without  her  wrap  rather 
than  with  it.  In  vain  she  reminded  herself  that 
the  situation  was  one  to  which  an  artist  was 
accustomed.  She  hadn't  been  in  a  studio  for  a 
year  without  learning  that  much,  though  she 
got  no  comfort  from  it  now.  No  comfort  was 
possible  with  the  vision  of  this  naked  mag- 

194 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

nificence  seared  on  her  memory.  Hubert  had 
let  her  come  without  a  welcome,  and  go  without 
a  protest.  He  was  probably  glad  when  she  went 
so  that  he  might  be  alone  with  this  wanton  who 
didn't  know  shame. 

In  the  end,  she  saw  but  one  course  before  her. 
She  would  make  the  best  of  Bob.  To  do  so 
would  mean  that  Bob  would  be  disinherited  by 
his  ogre  of  a  father,  but  with  Mrs.  Collingham's 
aid  a  counteracting  influence  might  be  found. 
Moreover,  she  could  thus  return  home,  confess 
herself  Bob's  wife,  and  offer  the  hundred  dollars 
to  her  father  as  cash  lawfully  her  own.  Life 
would  be  simplified  in  this  way,  even  though 
happiness  were  dead. 

She  was  the  last  of  the  commuting  family  to 
reach  the  house  that  evening,  and  on  crossing 
the  threshold  was  greeted  with  a  sense  of  cheer. 
It  did  not  mean  much  to  her  at  first,  for,  with 
the  optimism  of  a  hand-to-mouth  existence,  a 
sense  of  cheer  was  the  last  thing  the  family  ever 
abandoned.  She  herself  cast  all  outward  air  of 
trouble  away  from  her  on  opening  the  door,  be- 
cause it  was  in  the  tradition. 

Her  father  was  seated  quietly  smoking  his 
pipe,  which  he  had  not  done  for  the  past  week 
or  more.  Gussie  held  the  middle  of  the  floor, 
her  arms  extended  in  a  serpentine  wave,  hum- 
ming a  dance  tune  and  practicing  the  step.  To 
mark  the  rhythm,  Gladys  was  clapping  her 
hands  with  a  slow,  tom-tom  beat.  Pansy  alone 
stood  apart,  blinking  and  unresponsive,  as  if 

I9S 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

for  reasons  of  her  own  she  considered  this  mirth 
ill-timed. 

"Look,  Jen!"  Gladys  giggled,  as  her  eldest 
sister  passed  down  the  room.  "This  is  the  new 
thing  at  the  Washington.  Gus  has  got  it  so  you 
wouldn't  know  her  from  Samarine  herself." 

Jennie  went  on  to  the  kitchen,  where,  as  she 
expected,  her  mother  was  getting  the  supper,  and 
did  her  best  to  be  nonchalant. 

"Hello,  momma!  What's  the  good  word? 
What  makes  everyone  so  gay?" 

Lizzie  looked  up,  a  cover  in  one  hand  and  a 
spoon  in  the  other.  Her  face  was  so  radiant 
that  Jennie  was  still  more  mystified. 

"Oh,  Jennie  darling,  your  father  has  the 
money!  He  can  make  the  payment  to-morrow, 
and  everything  will  come  right." 

So  Jennie's  plans  recoiled  upon  herself.  She 
had  meant  to  tell  her  mother  here  and  now  that 
for  four  days  past  she  had  been  Bob  Collingham's 
wife,  and  had  a  hundred  dollars  in  her  top 
bureau  drawer.  Her  mother  was  to  tell  her 
father,  and  her  father  Teddy  and  the  girls.  But 
now — well,  what  would  be  the  use?  By  keeping 
her  secret  she  might  put  off  inevitable  fate  a 
little  longer. 

"Who  lent  it?"  Jennie  asked,  after  she  had 
chosen  her  line  of  action. 

"Nobody;  that's  the  wonderful  part  of  it. 
It's  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  Teddy  has 
earned." 

"'Earned!'    How?" 

196 


"Selling  bonds  for  a  man  he  knows.  He 
doesn't  want  anything  said  about  it,  because 
it's  what  he  calls  'on  the  side.'  If  the  house 
knew  of  it — that  he  was  working  in  off  times  for 
some  one  else — he  might  lose  his  job.  But,  oh, 
Jennie,  isn't  it  wonderful?" 

Jennie  thought  it  wonderful  for  other  reasons 
than  Teddy's  glory  and  the  peace  of  the  family 
mind.  It  was  less  easy  to  renounce  Hubert 
than  it  had  been  an  hour  or  two  earlier.  If  he 
snapped  his  fingers  she  had  said  to  herself,  while 
crossing  the  ferry,  she  would  run  to  him  like  a 
dog,  in  spite  of  everything;  and  if  she  did  it, 
she  would  want  to  be  free  from  the  complica- 
tions that  must  ensue  if  she  were  to  proclaim 
herself  Bob's  wife. 

Having  assented  to  her  mother's  praise  of 
Teddy,  she  went  back  through  the  living  room 
and  on  upstairs  to  take  ofF  her  hat  and  coat. 
Near  the  top  of  the  stairs,  the  door  of  the 
bathroom  opened  suddenly  and  Teddy  ap- 
peared in  his  shirt  sleeves.  There  being  noth- 
ing unusual  in  that,  she  was  about  to  say, 
"Hello,  Ted!"  and  ascend  the  few  remaining 
steps  to  her  room. 

But  seeing  her  moving  upward  in  the  dim  hall 
light,  Teddy  started  back  within  the  bathroom, 
and,  with  a  movement  he  couldn't  control, 
slammed  the  door  noisily.  The  action  was  so 
odd  that  she  called  out  to  him: 

"It's  only  me,  goose!  What's  the  matter 
with  you?  Have  you  got  the  jumps?" 

197 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

The  door  opened  and  Teddy  reappeared, 
grinning  sheepishly. 

"I — I  didn't  have  my  coat  on,"  was  the  only 
explanation  he  could  find. 

"Dear,  dear!"  Jennie  threw  over  her  shoulder, 
as  she  passed  into  her  own  room.  "We've  got 
terribly  modest  all  of  a  sudden,  haven't  we?" 

But  weeks  later  she  recalled  this  lame  excuse. 


CHAPTER  XV 

DURING  the  next  few  days,  Wray  snapped 
his   fingers  twice,   and   on   each  occasion 
Jennie  ran  to  him  like  a  dog,  as  she  had  foreseen 
she  would. 

The  first  time  was  in  response  to  a  telegram. 
The  telegram  said,  simply: 

Studio  Thursday,  3  P.M. 

There  was  no  signature,  but  Jennie  knew  what 
it  meant.  By  one  o'clock  she  was  dressing  fe- 
verishly; by  two,  she  had  said  good-by  to  her 
mother  and  was  on  her  way.  She  was  not 
thinking  of  her  twenty-five  thousand  dollars 
now,  or  of  any  offering  up  of  herself.  Her  one 
objective  was  to  drive  that  woman  from  the 
Byzantine  chair  so  that  Hubert  shouldn't  look 
at  her  again. 

But  she  had  not  got  out  of  Indiana  Avenue  on 
her  way  to  the  trolley  car  when  something  hap- 
pened which  had  never  happened  in  her  life 
before.  She  received  another  telegram,  the 
second  in  one  day.  The  messenger  boy,  who  was 
a  neighbor's  son,  had  hailed  her  from  across  the 
street. 

"Hello,  Jennie!  Are  you  Miss  Jane  Scar- 
14  199 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

borough  Follett?  That's  a  name  and  a  half, 
ain't  it?" 

Her  first  thought  was  that  Hubert  was  wiring 
to  put  her  off  because  he  wanted  the  other 
woman,  after  all.  Her  second,  that  he  had 
already  addressed  her  as  "Miss  Jennie  Follett," 
and  she  doubted  if  he  knew  her  full  baptismal 
name.  Only  in  one  connection  had  it  been  used 
of  late,  and  that  recollection  made  her  tremble. 

This  message,  too,  was  unsigned,  and,  being  so, 
it  puzzled  her: 

Always  close  to  you  in  spirit  and  loving  you. 

That  wasn't  like  Hubert — and  Bob  was  on  the 
sea. 

She  walked  slowly,  reading  it  again  and  again, 
till  her  eyes  caught  the  address  in  a  corner — 
Havana.  She  remembered  then  that  the  Deme- 
rara  was  to  touch  at  that  port,  and  understood. 
Crushing  the  telegraphic  slip  into  the  bottom  of 
her  handbag,  she  made  her  way  to  the  square 
and  took  her  place  in  the  car. 

As  she  jolted  down  the  face  of  the  cliff  she 
wished  that  this  message  hadn't  come  till  after 
her  return  from  the  studio.  Then  it  wouldn't 
have  mattered.  It  would  have  been  too  late  to 
matter.  Not  that  it  mattered  now — only,  that 
the  way  in  which  Bob  expressed  himself  made  her 
feel  uneasy.  "Always  close  to  you  in  spirit." 
She  didn't  want  him  to  be  close  to  her  in  any 
way,  but  in  spirit  least  of  a11  Latterly,  she  had 
heard  Mrs.  Weatherby,  a  convert  to  some  school 

200 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  New  Thought,  discourse  on  the  unreality  of 
separations  and  the  bridging  power  of  spirit,  and 
while  these  ideas  made  no  appeal  to  her,  they 
endued  Bob's  telegram  with  a  ghostly  creepiness. 
If  he  was  close  to  her  in  spirit  on  an  errand  like 
the  present  one  .  .  . 

So  she  turned  back  from  the  very  studio  door. 
She  couldn't  go  in.  She  couldn't  so  much  as  put 
her  hand  on  the  knob.  Knowing  that  Hubert 
was  within  a  few  yards  of  her,  eager  to  be  hers 
as  she  was  to  be  his,  she  crept  guiltily  down  the 
stairs. 

She  cried  all  night  from  humiliation  and  re- 
pentance. It  was  as  if  Bob  had  laid  a  spell  on 
her.  Unless  she  could  break  it,  her  life  would  be 
ruined. 

But  the  opportunity  to  break  it  came  no  later 
than  the  very  next  day.  Chancing  to  look  out 
into  Indiana  Avenue,  she  saw  Hubert  scanning 
Number  Eleven  from  the  other  side  of  the  street. 
He  must  indeed  want  to  see  her,  since  he  had 
taken  this  journey  into  the  unknown. 

Picking  up  a  sunshade,  she  went  out  and 
spoke  to  him.  He  refused  to  come  in,  but 
begged  her  to  take  a  little  walk. 

"Jennie,  what's  your  game?"  he  asked, 
roughly,  as  they  sauntered  down  the  avenue 
toward  the  edge  of  the  cliff.  "Why  don't  you 
come  to  the  studio  when  I  ask  you?  What  are 
you  afraid  of?" 

"I  did  come — the  other  day — but — " 

"Why  didn't  you  stay?    I  thought  you  would. 
201 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Brasshead  wouldn't  have  minded  it,  and  you 
could  have  seen  how  the  thing  is  done." 

"What's  the  good  of  seeing  how  it's  done  when 
— when  you've  got  some  one  else?" 

"But,  good  Lord!  Jennie,  this  is  not  the  only 
picture  of  the  kind  I  shall  ever  paint!  Even  if  I 
go  on  using  Emma  for  this,  I  shall  want  you  for 
another  one — and  I'm  not  sure  that  I  shall  go 
on  using  Emma.  Do  you  see?" 

She  was  so  perturbed  that  she  launched  on  a 
question  without  knowing  what  she  meant  to 
ask. 

"  Isn't  she— " 

"Oh,  she's  all  right  as  far  as  the  figure  goes. 
Features  coarse.  Not  a  bit  what  I'm  trying  to 
get.  Have  to  keep  toning  down  and  modifying 
to  give  her  the  spiritual  look  that  you've  got, 
Jennie,  to  throw  away.  I  keep  thinking  of  you 
all  the  time  I'm  doing  it.  Look  here,  if  you'll 
come  to-morrow,  I'll  pay  Brasshead  off  and  you 
shall  have  the  job." 

By  the  time  they  reached  Palisade  Walk  the 
business  was  settled  on  a  business  basis.  Not 
once  did  he  depart  from  the  professional  side  of 
the  affair,  and  not  once  did  she  allude  to  the 
scene  in  her  dressing-room.  But  what  was  un- 
derstood was  understood,  not  less  certainly  for 
its  being  by  passionate  mental  vibration,  with- 
out a  word,  or  a  glance,  or  a  pressure  of  the 
hand. 

But  the  next  day,  as  Jennie  was  leaving  the 
house  to  keep  her  appointment,  Josiah,  who  had 

202 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

gone  out  as  usual  to  look  for  work,  had  dragged 
himself  home  and  fainted  at  the  door. 

"I'm  all  in,"  he  mumbled,  on  his  return  to 
consciousness.  "I  don't  suppose  I  shall  ever 
get  a  chance  to  do  a  day's  work  again." 

Jennie  was  so  much  alarmed  that  she  forgot 
to  telephone  her  inability  to  go  to  the  studio  till 
after  Her  father  had  been  put  to  bed  and  the 
doctor  rad  come  and  gone. 

"Oh,  it's  all  right,"  Hubert  had  said,  listlessly. 
"I  didn't  expect  you.  I  knew  that  if  it  wasn't 
one  excuse,  it  would  be  another — 

"But  I  will  come,"  Jennie  had  interrupted, 
tearfully. 

"Do  just  as  you  like  about  that.  Emma's 
here,  and,  as  you're  so  uncertain,  I've  decided  to 
go  on  and  finish  the  picture  without  making  a 
change." 

He  put  up  the  receiver  on  saying  this,  so  that 
Jennie  was  left  all  in  the  air  with  her  love  and 
her  distress. 

When  Teddy  appeared  that  evening,  it  was 
she  who  told  him  of  their  father's  breakdown. 

"The  doctor  says  it's  worry,"  she  explained, 
"  and  lack  of  nutrition.  He  says  he  must  stay  in 
bed  a  week,  and  we've  got  to  feed  him  up  and  not 
let  him  worry  again." 

Teddy's  face  grew  longer  and  longer. 

"Then  we'll  have  to  have  more  money." 

"You  poor  Ted,  yes;  but  then  you're  making 
money  on  the  side,  aren't  you?" 

Reminding  himself,  as  he  did  a  hundred  times 
203 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

a  day,  that  Nicholson  had  had  five  years  in 
which  to  get  away  with  it,  Teddy  passed  on  up- 
stairs to  his  father's  bedside. 

"It's  all  right,  dad,"  he  tried  to  smile.  "Don't 
you  worry.  I'm  here.  I'll  take  care  of  ma  and 
the  girls.  You  just  make  your  mind  easy  and 
give  yourself  up  to  getting  well." 

Jennie's  attendance  at  the  studio  was  thus 
put  out  of  the  question  for  many  days,  and  in 
the  meantime  she  had  a  letter  posted  at  Havana. 
Fearing  that  it  would  come  and  attract  attention 
in  the  family,  she  watched  the  postman,  getting 
it  one  morning  before  breakfast.  Bob  wrote: 

There  is  a  love  so  big  and  strong  and  sure  that  separa- 
tions mean  nothing  to  it,  because  it  fills  the  world.  That's 
my  kind  of  love,  Jennie  darling.  You  can't  get  out  of  it — 
I  can't  get  out  of  it — even  if  we  would.  At  this  very  min- 
ute I'm  sailing  and  sailing;  but  I'm  not  being  carried 
farther  away  from  you.  The  love  in  which  you  and  I  are 
now  leading  our  lives  is  wider  than  the  great  big  circle 
made  by  the  horizon.  Don't  forget  that,  dear.  I'm  always 
with  you.  Love  doesn't  recognize  distance.  Love  isn't 
physical  or  geographical.  It's  force,  power,  influence.  I 
love  you  so  much  that  I  know  I  can  keep  you  safe  even 
though  I'm  on  the  other  side  of  the  world.  I  can't  fend 
troubles  away  from  you,  worse  luck,  but  I  can  carry  you 
through  them.  I  know  that  till  I  come  back  you'll  be 
having  a  hard  time;  but  my  love  will  hang  round  you  like 
an  enchanted  cloak,  and  nothing  will  really  get  at  you. 
You're  always  wearing  that  cloak,  Jennie;  you  always 
walk  with  it  about  you. 

While  Jennie  was  reading  this,  Edith  Colling- 
ham,  at  breakfast  at  Marillo  Park,  was  springing 

i  204 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

a  question  on  her  father.  She  sprang  it  at  break- 
fast because  it  was  the  only  time  she  was  sure 
of  seeing  him  alone. 

"Father,  how  far  are  children  obliged  to  marry 
or  not  to  marry  in  deference  to  their  parents* 
wishes,  and  how  far  have  fathers  and  mothers 
the  right  to  interfere?" 

Dauphin,  who  was  on  his  haunches  near  his 
master's  knee,  removed  himself  to  a  midway 
position  between  the  two  ends  of  the  table,  as  if 
he  felt  that  in  the  struggle  he  perceived  to  be 
coming  he  couldn't  throw  his  influence  with 
either  side.  Through  the  open  window  Max 
could  be  seen  in  perpetual  motion  on  the  lawn, 
yet  pausing  every  two  minutes  to  look  wistfully 
down  the  avenue  in  the  hope  of  some  loved 
approach. 

Without  answering  at  once,  Collingham  tapped 
an  egg  with  a  spoon.  The  broaching  of  so  per- 
sonal a  question  between  one  of  his  children  and 
himself  was  something  new.  It  had  been  an 
established  rule  in  the  household  that,  however 
free  the  intercourse  between  the  boy  and  the 
girl  and  their  mother,  the  approach  to  their 
father  was  always  indirect.  Junia  had  made  it 
her  lifelong  part  to  explain  the  children  to  their 
father  and  the  father  to  his  children,  but  rarely 
to  give  them  a  chance  of  explaining  themselves 
to  each  other.  Collingham  had  acquiesced  in 
this  for  the  reason  that  the  duties  of  a  parent 
were  not  those  for  which  he  felt  himself,  in  his 
own  phrase,  specially  "cut  out." 

205 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

The  duties  for  which  he  did  feel  himself  cut 
out  were  those  that  had  to  do  with  the  invest- 
ment of  money.  On  this  ground,  he  spoke  with 
authority;  he  was  original,  intuitive,  inspired. 
When  it  came  to  a  flair  for  the  stock  which  was 
selling  to-day  at  fifty  and  which  to-morrow  would 
be  worth  five  hundred,  he  belonged  to  the  il- 
luminati.  This  being  the  highest  use  of  intelli- 
gence known  to  man,  he  felt  it  his  duty  to 
specialize  in  it  to  the  exclusion  of  everything 
else. 

As  already  hinted,  there  were  two  Collinghams. 
There  was  the  natural  man,  a  kindly,  generous 
fellow  who  would  never  have  made  a  big  position 
in  the  world;  and  there  was  the  other  Colling- 
ham,  standardized  to  the  accepted,  forceful, 
American-business-man  pattern,  and  who,  now 
that  he  was  sixty-odd,  was  the  Collingham  who 
mainly  had  the  upper  hand. 

Mainly,  but  not  completely.  The  natural 
Collingham  often  made  timid  attempts  to  speak 
and  had  to  be  stifled.  He  was  being  stifled  while 
the  standardized  Collingham  tapped  his  egg. 
It  was  the  pupil  of  Junia,  Bickley,  and  the 
business  world  who  finally  sought  to  gain  time 
by  asking  a  counter-question. 

"What  do  you  want  to  know  for?" 

Edith  was  prepared  for  this. 

"Because  I  may  make  a  marriage  that  you 
and  mother  wouldn't  like;  and  I  think  it  pos- 
sible that  Bob  may  do  the  same." 

Whatever  the  natural  Collingham  might  have 
206 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

said  to  this,  the  man  who  had  been  evolved  from 
him  could  have  but  one  response. 

"People  who  act  on  their  own  responsibility 
should  be  prepared  to  go  the  whole  hog." 

Edith  sipped  her  coffee  while  she  worked  out 
the  significance  of  this. 

"Does  that  mean  that  you  wouldn't  give  us 
any  money?" 

"Rather  that,  being  so  extremely  independent, 
you  wouldn't  ask  for  it." 

"Oh,  ask  for  it — no;    and  yet — " 

"And  yet  you  think  I  ought  to  hand  it  out." 

"I  was  thinking  rather  of  a  kind  of  noblesse 
oblige—" 

"In  which  all  the  noblesse  must  be  mine." 

"Not  exactly  that.  In  which  perhaps  the 
noblesse  should  be  ours.  Even  if  I  should  marry 
a  poor  man,  I  can't  help  being  a  Collingham,  a 
member  of  a  family  with  large  ideas  and  a  large 
way  of  living." 

"Yes;  but,  you  see,  you'd  be  giving  them  up." 

"You  can't  give  up  what's  been  bred  into  you. 
And  in  my  case  I  should  be  bringing  the  man — 
you  must  let  me  say  it,  dad — I  should  be  bringing 
the  man  I — I  love — so  little — " 

"He's  probably  counting  on  a  great  deal. 
Poor  men  who  marry  rich  men's  daughters 
generally  do." 

"I  was  going  to  say  that  while  he'd  be  giving 
me  so  much,  all  I  could  offer  him  would  be 
money;  and  if  I  didn't  bring  that — " 

"Well?    Goon." 

207 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"If  I  didn't  bring  that,  I  should  feel  so  humili- 
ated before  him — " 

He  affected  an  ignorance  which  was  not  a 
fact. 

"Who  is  this  paragon,  anyhow?" 

"I  thought  mother  might  have  told  you.  It's 
Mr.  Ayling." 

"Oh,  that  teacher  fellow!" 

"He's  more  than  that,  dad.  He's  a  professor 
in  one  of  our  greatest  universities.  He's  a 
writer  beginning  to  be  recognized  as  having 
ideas.  He  has  a  position  of  his  own — " 

"Yes;   but  only  an  intellectual  one." 

She  raised  her  eyebrows. 

"'Only'?" 

He  straightened  himself  and  prepared  for 
business. 

"Look  here,  Edith,  don't  kid  yourself.  An 
intellectual  position  in  this  country  is  no  position 
at  all.  The  American  people  have  no  use  for  the 
intellectual,  and  they've  made  that  plain." 

She  could  hardly  express  her  amazement. 

"Why,  dad!  There's  no  country  in  the  world 
where  people  go  in  more  for  education,  where 
there  are  more  men  who  go  to  colleges — " 

"Yes — to  fit  them  for  making  money,  not  to 
turn  them  into  highbrows.  You  must  have  a 
spade  to  dig  a  garden,  but  it's  the  garden  you're 
proud  of,  not  the  spade." 

"And  the  very  President  of  the  country — " 

"Is  what  you  call  an  intellectual  man;  but 
that's  a  bit  of  chance.  He's  not  President  be- 

208 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

cause  he  was  a  college  professor,  but  because  he 
was  a  politician.  If  he  hadn't  been  a  politician — 
something  that  the  country  values — he'd  still 
be  rotting  in  some  two-by-three  university. 
Listen,  Edith!"  He  emphasized  his  point  by 
the  movement  of  his  forefinger.  "We've  a  rule 
in  business  which  is  the  test  of  everything.  So 
long  as  you  stick  to  it  you  can't  go  wrong  in  your 
estimates.  The  value  of  a  thing  is  as  much  money 
as  it  will  bring.  You  know  the  value  of  the  intel- 
lectual in  American  eyes  the  minute  you  think 
of  what  the  American  people  is  willing  to  pay 
for  it.  You  say  your  intellectual  man  has  a  posi- 
tion of  his  own.  Well,  you  can  see  how  big  the 
position  is  by  what  he  earns.  He  doesn't  earn 
enough  decently  to  support  a  wife,  and  so  long 
as  the  American  people  have  anything  to  say  to 
it,  he  never  will.  You  can  box  the  whole  com- 
pass of  fellows  who  live  by  their  wits — teachers, 
writers,  journalists,  artists,  musicians,  clergy- 
men, and  the  whole  tribe  of  them.  We  don't 
want  them  in  this  country,  except  as  you  want  a 
spade  and  a  hoe  in  your  tool-house.  When  they 
try  to  get  in,  we  starve  them  out;  and,  Colling- 
ham  as  you  are,  once  you've  married  this  fellow 
you'll  go  with  your  gang."  He  pushed  back  his 
chair  and  rose.  "That's  all  I've  got  to  say. 
Think  it  over."  As  he  passed  out  through  the 
French  window  to  the  terrace  beyond  he  snapped 
his  fingers.  "Dauphin,  come  along!" 

But,   perhaps   for  the   first  time   in   his   life, 
Dauphin   didn't   immediately   follow  him.     In- 

209 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

stead,  he  went  first  to  Edith,  laying  his  long 
nozzle  in  her  lap. 

For  five  or  ten  minutes,  as  Collingham  smoked 
his  morning  cigar  while  visiting  the  stables,  the 
garage,  and  the  kitchen  garden,  the  natural  man 
tried  to  raise  his  voice. 

"Why  didn't  you  say,  *  Marry  your  man, 
Edith,  my  child,  and  I'll  give  you  ten  thousand 
a  year?'  Poor  little  girl,"  this  first  Collingham 
went  on,  "she's  so  frank  and  true  and  high 
spirited!  You've  made  her  unhappy  when  you. 
could  so  easily  have  made  her  glad." 

"You  said  what  any  other  American  father 
in  your  position  would  have  said,"  the  pupil  of 
Bickley  and  Junia  argued,  on  the  other  side. 
"True,  you've  made  her  unhappy,  but  young 
people  often  have  to  be  made  unhappy  in  order 
that  the  foolish  dictates  of  the  heart  may  be 
repressed.  There  are  millions  of  people  all  over 
the  world  whose  lives  would  have  been  spoiled 
if  such  early  emotional  impulses  hadn't  been 
thwarted." 

And,  after  all,  it  was  true  that  the  intellectual 
was  not  respected.  The  public  pretended  that  it 
was,  but  when  it  came  to  the  test  of  social  and 
financial  reward — the  only  rewards  there  were — 
the  pretense  was  apparent.  There  were  no  intel- 
lectual people  at  Marillo  Park;  there  were  none 
whom  he,  Collingham,  knew  in  business.  There 
were  men  with  brains;  but  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  intellectual  they  were  described 
as  brainy.  Edith  as  the  wife  of  an  intellectual 

210 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

man  would  be  self-destroyed;  and  it  was  his 
duty  as  her  father  to  stop,  if  he  could,  that 
self-destruction. 

By  the  time  he  had  reached  the  point  in  his 
morning  ritual  which  brought  him  to  Junia's 
bedside,  he  was  standardized  again,  even  though 
it  was  with  a  bleeding  heart.  He  could  more 
easily  suffer  a  bleeding  heart  than  he  could  the 
fear  of  not  being  an  efficient  man  of  business. 

"What  use  have  you  had  for  the  twenty-five 
thousand  I've  paid  in  your  account?"  he  asked, 
before  he  kissed  her  good-by. 

She  concealed  her  anxiety  that  so  many  days 
had  passed  without  a  sign  from  Jennie  under  an 
air  of  nonchalance. 

"No  use  as  yet,  but  I  expect  to  have.  I  shall 
let  you  know  when  the  time  comes." 

But  no  sign  could  come  from  Jennie,  for  the 
reason  that  her  father  died  in  mid-July,  and 
during  the  intervening  weeks  she  was  tied  to  his 
bedroom.  As  the  eldest  daughter  and  the  only 
one  at  home,  all  her  other  functions  were  ab- 
sorbed in  those  of  nurse.  Luckily,  there  was 
money  in  the  house,  for  Teddy  had  been  success- 
ful in  his  efforts  "on  the  side,"  and  Bob  con- 
tinued to  transmit  small  sums  to  herself,  which 
she  added  to  the  hundred  dollars  in  the  top 
bureau  drawer.  Bob,  Hubert,  Collingham  Lodge, 
her  ambition,  and  her  love  became  unreal  and 
remote  as  she  watched  the  setting  of  the  sun  to 
which  her  being  had  been  turned.  In  the  eyes  of 
others,  Josiah  might  be  feeble  and  a  failure,  but 

211 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

to  Teddy  and  his  sisters  he  was  their  father,  the 
pivot  of  their  lives,  the  nearest  thing  to  a  supreme 
being  they  had  known. 

Lizzie's  grief  was  different.  Her  heart  didn't 
ache  because  he  was  dying.  Life  having  become 
what  it  was,  he  was  better  dead.  If  she  could 
have  died  herself,  she  would  have  gone  to  her 
rest  gladly,  had  it  not  been  for  the  children. 
For  their  sake,  she  remained  sweet,  calm,  active, 
brewing  and  baking,  sweeping  and  cleaning, 
sitting  up  at  night  with  Josiah  while  they  were 
asleep,  and  hiding  the  fact  that  instead  of  a 
heart  she  felt  nothing  within  her  but  a  stone. 

Her  grief  was  not  for  Josiah;  it  was  for  the 
futility  of  the  best  things  human  beings  could 
bring  to  life.  Honesty,  industry,  thrift,  devo- 
tion, ambition,  and  romance  had  been  the 
qualifications  with  which  Josiah  Follett  and 
Lizzie  Scarborough  had  faced  the  world;  and 
this  was  the  best  the  world  could  do  with  them. 
"It  isn't  as  if  we  ever  faltered  or  refused  or 
turned  aside,"  she  mused  to  herself,  as  she  hur- 
ried from  one  task  to  another.  "We've  been 
absolutely  faithful.  We've  had  pluck  in  the  face 
of  every  discouragement  and  eaten  ashes  as  if 
it  were  bread,  and,  in  the  end,  we  come  to  this. 
It  makes  no  difference  that  we  didn't  deserve  it; 
we  get  it  just  the  same." 

Josiah's  wanderings  as  his  mind  grew  feebler 
turned  forever  round  one  central  theme:  A  job! 
a  job !  To  be  allowed  to  work!  To  have  a  chance 
to  earn  a  living!  It  was  his  kingdom  of  heaven, 

212 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

his  forgiveness  of  sins,  his  paradise  of  God.    In  the 
middle  of  night  he  would  open  his  eyes  and  say: 

"I've  got  a  job,  Lizzie.    Fifty  a  week!" 

"Yes,  yes,"  Lizzie  would  say,  drawing  the 
sheet  about  his  shoulders.  "Yes,  yes;  you'll  go 
to  town  in  the  morning.  Now  turn  over,  dear, 
and  go  to  sleep  again." 

These  excitements  were  generally  in  the  small 
hours  of  the  morning.  By  day,  he  was  less 
cheerful. 

"I'm  all  in,  Jennie  darling,"  he  would  say 
then.  "I  don't  suppose  I'll  ever  get  a  chance  to 
do  a  day's  work  again." 

But  one  hot  afternoon  in  the  middle  of  July 
he  woke  from  a  long  sleep  with  a  look  that 
startled  her.  Jennie  had  never  seen  the  approach 
of  death,  but,  now  that  she  did,  she  knew  it  could 
be  nothing  else.  He  had  simply  rolled  over  on 
his  back,  staring  upward  with  eyes  that  had  be- 
come curiously  glassy  and  sightless.  Jennie  ran 
to  the  head  of  the  stairs. 

"Momma!     Momma!     Come  quick!" 

He  said  nothing  till  Lizzie  had  reached  the 
bedside.  Though  he  didn't  move  his  head  or 
look  toward  her,  he  seemed  to  know  that  she  was 
there. 

"Here's  mother,  Lizzie."  He  raised  his  hands, 
while  a  look  of  glad  surprise  stole  over  his  face. 
"There's  a  country,"  he  stammered  on,  brokenly, 
"no,  it  isn't  a  country — it's  like  a  town — they're 
working — they've  got  work  for  me — and — and 
they're  never — they're  never — fired." 

213 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

The  hands  fell,  but  the  look  of  glad  surprise 
was  only  shut  out  of  sight  by  the  coffin  lid. 

Teddy  paid  for  the  lot  in  the  cemetery,  as  well 
as  the  other  expenses  of  the  funeral,  within  a  week 
of  his  father's  death.  ''Now  I'm  through,"  he 
said  to  himself,  with  a  long  sigh  of  relief. 

"You  darling  Ted,"  was  Jennie's  commenda- 
tion. "You  must  have  given  momma  five  hun- 
dred dollars  at  least.  Now  I  hope  you'll  be  able 
to  save  a  little  for  yourself." 

At  the  bank,  Teddy's  younger  colleagues 
were  sympathetic,  Lobley  especially  doing  him 
kindly  little  turns.  He  asked  him  to  supper  one 
evening  at  a  restaurant,  where  they  talked  of 
marksmanship,  at  which  Teddy  had  been  pro- 
ficient in  the  navy.  He  was  out  of  practice  now, 
he  said,  to  which  Lobley  had  replied  that  it  was 
a  pity.  He,  Lobley,  had  an  automatic  pistol 
illegally  at  home,  and  if  Teddy  would  like  to 
borrow  it  he  could  soon  bring  himself  back  to 
his  old  form.  Teddy  did  so  like,  and  went  back 
to  Pemberton  Heights  with  the  thing  secreted  on 
his  person.  It  went  with  him  to  the  bank  next 
day — and  every  day. 

For  Teddy  had  begun  to  notice  symptoms  to 
which  one  less  keenly  suspicious  would  be  blind. 
Nothing  was  ever  said  of  money  missing,  and  no 
hint  thrown  out  that  he  himself  was  not  trusted 
as  before.  He  had  nothing  to  go  on  except  that 
Mr.  Brunt  became  more  taciturn  than  ever,  and 
once  or  twice  he  thought  he  was  being  watched. 
The  eyes  of  Jackman,  the  principal  house  de- 

214 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

tective,  wandered  often  toward  him,  and  twice 
he,  Teddy,  had  seen  Jackman  in  conference  with 
Flynn. 

"They'll  never  get  me  alive,"  was  his  inner 
consolation,  though  immediate  suicide  sug- 
gested itself  as  an  alternative,  and  flight,  disap- 
pearance, an  absolute  blotting  out  was  a  third 
expedient. 

Yet  nothing  was  sure;  nothing  was  even  re- 
motely sure.  By  becoming  too  jumpy  he  might 
easily  give  himself  away.  Nicholson  had  had 
five  years.  In  two  years,  in  one,  Teddy  meant  to 
be  square  with  the  bank  again. 

But  one  afternoon,  as  he  emerged  into  Broad 
Street  on  his  way  home,  Jackman  and  Flynn 
were  talking  together  on  the  opposite  pavement. 
The  boy  jumped  back,  though  not  before  he  saw 
Jackman  make  a  sign  to  Flynn  which  said  as 
plainly  as  words,  "There  he  is  now." 

To  Teddy,  it  was  the  end  of  the  world.  All  the 
past,  all  the  future,  merged  into  this  single 
second  of  terror.  He  looked  across  at  them;  they 
looked  across  at  him.  There  was  a  degree  of  con- 
fession in  the  very  way  in  which  his  blanched 
face  stared  at  them  through  the  intervening 
crowdsl 

Jackman's  lips  formed  half  a  dozen  syllables, 
emphasized  by  a  nod  and  a  lifting  of  the  brows. 

"That's  the  guy  all  righty,"  were  the  words 
Teddy  practically  heard. 

Like  a  startled  wild  thing,  he  had  but  one  im- 
pulse— to  run.     Actual  running  in  Broad  Street 
15  2I5 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

at  that  hour  of  the  day  being  out  of  the  question, 
he  dived  into  the  procession  mounting  toward 
Wall  Street,  ducking,  dodging,  pushing,  almost 
knocking  people  down,  and  mad  with  fear. 
"They  '11  never  get  me  alive,"  he  was  saying  to 
himself;  but  how  in  that  crowd  to  find  space  in 
which  to  turn  the  pistol  to  his  heart  already 
puzzled  him. 

At  the  corner  of  Wall  Street  he  summoned 
courage  to  look  over  his  shoulder.  They  might 
not  be  after  him.  If  not,  it  would  prove  a  false 
alarm,  such  as  he  had  had  before.  But  there 
they  were — Jackman  scrambling  laboriously  up 
the  other  side  of  Broad  Street,  and  Flynn  crossing 
it,  picking  his  way  among  the  vans  and  motor 
cars. 

Like  a  frightened  rabbit,  Teddy  scurried  on 
again,  meaning  to  gain  Nassau  Street  and  some- 
how double  on  his  tracks. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

BUT  Teddy  did  not  double  on  his  tracks  in 
Nassau  Street,  for  the  reason  that,  in  again 
looking  over  his  shoulder,  he  saw  that  Flynn  had 
taken  one  side  of  that  thoroughfare  and  Jackman 
the  other.  They  were  burly  men,  who  moved 
heavily,  while  he,  in  spite  of  his  stocky  build, 
glided  in  and  out  among  the  pedestrians  with  the 
agility  of  a  squirrel.  He  was  putting  distance 
between  himself  and  them,  and  five  minutes' 
leeway  would  be  enough  for  him.  All  he  needed 
was  the  space  and  privacy  in  which  to  shoot 
himself. 

At  the  corner  of  John  Street  he  turned  to  the 
left  and  made  toward  Broadway.  They  would 
expect  him  to  do  this,  his  chief  hope  being  that 
among  the  homing  swarms  they  would  already 
have  lost  sight  of  him.  His  mind  was  not  work- 
ing. He  was  not  looking  ahead,  even  over  the 
few  minutes  he  had  still  to  live.  All  his  instincts 
were  fused  into  the  fear  of  the  hand  of  the  law 
on  his  person.  It  was  like  Jennie's  terror  of  the 
hand  of  a  man  she  didn't  love — a  frenzy  for 
physical  sanctity  stronger  than  the  fear  of 
death. 

At  the  same  time,  he  couldn't  run  the  risk  of 
being  more  noticeable  than  the  majority  of  people 

217 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

going  his  way.  As  he  pushed  and  dodged,  a 
young  man  whom  he  had  jostled  called  out,  in 
ironic  good  humor,  "Say,  is  the  cop  after  you?" 
at  which  Teddy  almost  lost  his  head.  He  ex- 
pected a  crowd  to  gather,  and  three  or  four  men 
to  hold  him  by  the  arms  till  Jackman  and  Flynn 
came  up.  But  nothing  happened.  The  pro- 
testing young  man  was  lost  in  the  scramble,  and 
he,  Teddy,  found  himself  in  Broadway. 

Paying  no  heed  to  the  jam  of  street  cars,  lor- 
ries, private  cars,  and  motor  trucks,  he  dashed 
into  the  interlaced  streams  of  traffic.  He  dashed 
— and  was  held  up.  He  dashed  again — and  was 
held  up  a  second  time.  He  was  held  up  a  third 
time,  a  fourth,  and  a  fifth.  With  every  spurt  of 
two  or  three  feet,  cries  warned  him  and  curses 
startled  him.  "Say,  sonny,  your  ma  must  have 
lost  you,"  came  from  a  jocose  chauffeur  beside 
whose  machine  Teddy  had  been  brought  to  a 
halt.  "I'd  damn  well  like  to  run  over  you," 
shouted  the  driver  of  a  van  who  had  narrowly 
escaped  doing  it.  Teddy  wished  he  had.  If  he 
could  only  be  sure  of  being  killed,  it  might  have 
been  the  easiest  way  out. 

Reaching  the  opposite  pavement,  he  had  time 
to  see  that  Jackman  had  crossed  lower  down  and 
more  easily  than  he,  and  was  lumbering  toward 
him  from  the  downtown  direction.  Jackman 
could  have  shouted  to  the  passers-by  to  lay  hold 
of  Teddy,  only  that,  from  a  distance  and  among 
such  numbers,  he  couldn't  indicate  his  victim. 
Being  younger  than  Flynn  and  of  lighter  build, 

218 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

he  could  move  in  his  own  way  almost  with 
Teddy's  rapidity.  The  boy  didn't  dare  to  run, 
because  the  action  would  have  marked  him  out, 
but  he  started  again  on  his  snakelike  gliding 
between  pedestrians.  He  must  gain  some  door- 
way, some  cellar,  some  hole  of  any  sort,  in  which 
to  draw  his  pistol.  He  would  have  drawn  it 
there  and  then,  only  that  a  hundred  hands 
would  have  seized  him. 

All  at  once  he  saw  the  open  portal  of  a  great 
mercantile  building,  leading  to  a  vast  interior 
with  which  he  was  familiar.  There  were  several 
exits  and  many  floors.  Once  he  had  turned  in 
here,  he  could  cross  the  scent.  In  he  went,  with 
scores  who  were  doing  likewise,  passing  scores 
who  were  coming  out.  His  first  intention  was  to 
avoid  the  conspicuous  exit  toward  Dey  Street 
and  make  for  the  less  obvious  one  into  Fulton 
Street;  but  in  doing  that,  he  passed  a  line  of 
some  twenty  lifts,  of  which  one  was  about  to 
close  its  door.  He  slipped  into  it  like  a  hare  into 
its  warren.  The  door  clanged;  the  lift  moved 
upward  with  an  oily  speed.  Among  his  com- 
panions he  was  hot,  flurried,  breathless,  and  yet 
not  more  so  than  any  other  young  clerk  who  had 
been  doing  an  errand  against  time. 

There  were  nearly  thirty  floors,  and  he  got  off 
at  the  twenty-third.  He  chose  the  twenty-third 
so  as  not  to  get  off  too  soon,  and  yet  not  call 
attention  to  himself  by  remaining  in  the  lift 
when  most  of  its  occupants  had  left  it.  The  floor 
was  spacious  and  almost  empty.  A  few  people 

219 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

were  waiting  for  a  lift  to  take  them  down;  a 
few  were  going  in  and  out  of  offices,  but  other- 
wise he  had  the  place  to  himself. 

Mechanically  he  walked  to  a  window  and 
looked  out.  He  seemed  to  be  up  in  the  sky,  with 
only  the  tops  of  a  few  giant  cubes  on  a  level  with 
himself.  "Skyscrapers"  they  were  called,  and 
skyscrapers  they  seemed  up  here  even  more  than 
down  below.  The  tip  of  the  great  city,  the 
stretches  of  the  bay,  the  green  slopes  of  Staten 
Island,  and  the  far-off  colossal  woman  with  a 
torch  were  all  within  his  vision,  with  the  oblique 
strip  that  was  Broadway,  a  tiny,  ugly  gash  in 
which  bacteria  were  squirming,  deep  down  and 
cutting  across  the  foreground. 

Except  for  the  dull  roar  that  came  up  and  the 
clang  of  an  occasional  footstep  along  the  hall- 
ways, it  was  so  still  and  pleasant  that  the  need 
to  shoot  himself  seemed  for  the  minute  less  in- 
sistent. It  would  have  to  be  done  sooner  or 
later,  but  when  it  comes  to  suicide,  even  a  few 
minutes'  respite  is  something.  He  could  have 
done  the  thing  right  there  and  then  by  the 
window,  where  the  few  people  within  hearing 
would  have  run  to  him  at  sound  of  the  shot.  If 
the  shot  didn't  kill  him,  they  would  keep  him 
from  firing  another.  Publicity,  distasteful  in 
itself,  might  lead  to  ineffectuality. 

He  must  find  a  lavatory,  and  so  began  walking 
up  and  down  the  corridors,  looking  at  doors 
discreetly  placed  in  corners.  When  he  came  to 
his  objective,  it  was  locked.  Again  it  was  re- 

220 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

prieve.  The  same  door  would  be  on  other 
floors,  but  he  was  not  ready  for  the  moment  to 
forsake  his  shelter.  It  was  true  that  at  any 
minute  Flynn  and  Jackman  might  emerge  from 
the  lift,  but  there  were  nearly  thirty  chances 
that  if  they  had  followed  him  so  closely  they 
would  not  select  this  landing.  Even  more  were 
the  chances  that  they  had  not  seen  him  slip  into 
the  building  at  all. 

Fevered  and  thirsty,  he  stooped  to  drink  at 
the  fountain  crowning  the  head  of  a  little  bronze 
woman  with  a  pair  of  dolphins  on  her  shoulders. 
She  seemed  to  be  of  Maya  type,  and  a  uniformed 
guardian  had  once  told  him  that  a  great  modern 
sculptor  had  molded  her.  With  a  difference  in 
dolphins,  she  was  repeated  on  every  floor,  forever 
diademed  in  water. 

Teddy's  mind  had  so  far  suspended  operation 
as  to  his  immediate  plight  that  he  went  back  to 
the  morning,  seven  or  eight  months  previously, 
when  an  errand  from  Mr.  Brunt  had  brought 
him  into  the  great  ground-floor  atrium,  revealing 
the  Basilica  Julia  or  the  Basilica  Emilia  of 
Ancient  Rome  Restored  right  there  in  lower 
Broadway.  Simplicity,  immensity,  the  awe- 
some beauty  of  mere  form!  The  wide  spaces, 
the  mighty  columns,  the  tampered  white  light  of 
majestic  Roman  windows!  The  absence  of 
striving  for  effect!  The  peace,  the  restfulness, 
the  cheerfulness,  when  striving  for  effect  are 
abandoned,  dwarfing  the  magnitude  of  crowds 
and  reducing  their  ebbings  and  flowing  to  mere 

221 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

vanity!  Like  Jennie  with  her  emotions,  like 
Pansy  with  her  intuitions,  Teddy  had  no  words 
for  these  impressions;  but  the  Scarborough 
tradition,  nursed  on  Ancient  Rome  Restored, 
vibrated  to  their  music. 

"And  here  I  am,  trapped  like  a  rat  in  a  hole!" 

So  he  came  back  to  it.  He  wondered  if  he 
were  awake.  Was  it  possible  that  ten  or  fifteen 
minutes  could  have  transformed  him  from  a 
hard-working,  home-loving  boy  into  a  fugitive 
who  had  no  choice  left  but  to  shoot  himself? 
As  for  facing  the  disgrace,  he  did  not  consider 
it.  To  stand  before  his  mother  charged  with 
theft,  even  if  it  was  on  her  behalf,  was  not  to  be 
thought  of.  He  couldn't  do  it,  and  there  was  an 
end  to  it.  Still  less  could  he  go  through  the  other 
incidentals,  handcuffs,  a  cell,  the  court,  the 
sentence,  Bitterwell,  and  the  lifetime  that  would 
come  after  his  release.  He  could  put  the  pistol 
to  his  heart  and,  if  necessary,  he  could  burn  in 
hell — if  there  was  a  hell;  but  he  couldn't  do  the 
other  thing. 

And  yet  to  put  the  pistol  to  his  heart  and  burn 
in  hell  formed  a  lamentable  choice  on  their  side. 

"I'm  not  a  thief,"  he  protested,  inwardly.  "I 
took  the  money — how  could  I  help  it,  with  dad 
sick  and  ma  at  the  end  of  everything? — but  I'm 
not  a  thief." 

He  was  sure  of  that.  It  became  a  formula, 
not  perhaps  of  comfort,  but  of  justification. 
Had  he  been  a  thief,  he  told  himself,  he  could 
have  faced  the  music;  but  it  was  precisely  be- 

222 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

cause  he  had  taken  money  while  preserving  his 
inner  probity  that  he  refused  to  be  judged  by  the 
standards  of  men.  Once  more  he  couldn't  ex- 
press it  in  this  way  to  himself;  but  it  was  the 
conclusion  to  which  his  instincts  leaped.  Only 
one  tribunal  could  discern  between  the  good  and 
evil  in  his  case;  so  he  was  resolved  to  go  before  it. 

In  a  quiet  corner  he  began  to  cry.  He  was 
only  a  boy,  with  a  boy's  facility  of  emotion, 
especially  of  distress.  He  cried  at  the  thought 
of  his  mother  and  the  girls,  with  no  one  to  fend 
for  them,  and  no  Teddy  coming  home  in  the 
evenings.  It  was  true  that,  apart  from  his 
filchings,  he  had  been  able  to  fend  for  them  only 
to  the  extent  of  eighteen  per,  but  there  was 
always  a  chance  of  better  days  ahead.  Even  at 
the  worst  of  times,  they  had  a  good  deal  of  fun 
among  themselves,  and  now  .  .  . 

Now  his  mother  would  be  in  the  kitchen,  be- 
ginning to  get  supper,  and  each  of  the  girls  would 
be  making  her  way  back  to  Indiana  Avenue. 
Pansy's  dog  clock  would  tell  her  when  to  watch 
for  them,  and  the  loving  little  creature  would  be 
eying  the  door,  ready  to  welcome  each  of  them 
in  turn.  If  she  had  a  preference,  it  was  for 
himself,  and  the  feeling  of  her  gentle  paws 
against  his  shin  was  connected  with  the  ten- 
derest  things  he  knew. 

No;  it  wasn't  possible.  He  couldn't  be  skyed 
on  that  twenty-third  floor,  unable  to  come  down, 
unable  to  go  home.  It  must  be  a  nightmare. 
Such  things  didn't  happen.  He  was  Teddy 

223 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Follett,  a  good  boy  at  heart,  with  an  honorable 
record  in  the  navy.  He  had  never  meant  to 
steal,  but  what  could  he  do?  The  money  was 
there,  to  be  stacked  in  the  vaults  of  Collingham 
&  Law's,  not  to  be  touched  for  months,  very 
likely,  and  the  home  needs  imperative.  He 
couldn't  see  his  father  and  mother  turned  out  of 
house  and  home  because  they  couldn't  pay  their 
taxes.  It  was  not  in  common  sense.  Nothing 
was  in  common  sense.  That  he  should  be 
dragged  into  court,  that  his  mother  should  break 
her  heart,  that  shame  should  be  showered  on  his 
sisters  was  ridiculous.  Somewhere  in  the  uni- 
verse there  was  a  great  big  principle  that  was  on 
his  side,  though  he  didn't  know  what  it  was. 

What  he  did  know  was  that  crying  was  un- 
manly. Sopping  up  his  tears  and  trying  not  to 
think,  he  jumped  into  the  first  lift  that  stopped 
and  got  out  at  floor  eleven.  There  he  went 
straight  to  the  lavatory,  which  he  now  knew  how 
to  place,  and  once  more  found  the  door  locked. 

Though  again  it  was  reprieve,  it  was  reprieve 
almost  unwelcome.  The  first  passing  lift  was 
going  upward,  and  so  he  ascended  to  floor  seven- 
teen. Here  again  the  lavatory  was  locked,  as 
it  was  on  floors  nineteen  and  twenty-five,  both 
of  which  he  tried.  He  began  to  understand  that 
they  were  locked  according  to  a  principle,  and 
that  for  those  seeking  privacy  in  which  to  shoot 
themselves  they  offered  no  resource. 

Moreover,  offices  were  closing  and  the  great 
building  emptying  itself  rapidly.  The  rush  was 

224 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

all  to  the  lifts  going  downward.  He,  too,  must 
go  downward.  To  be  found  skulking  in  corri- 
dors where  he  had  no  business  would  expose  him 
to  suspicion.  After  nearly  an  hour  spent  above 
he  descended  to  the  atrium,  where  Flynn  and 
Jackman  might  be  watching  the  cages  disgorge, 
knowing  that  in  time  he  must  appear  from  one 
of  them. 

But  he  walked  out  without  interference.  A 
far  hint  of  twilight  was  deepening  the  atmosphere 
round  the  heads  of  the  great  columns,  and  the 
waning  sunshine  spoke  of  workers  seeking  rest. 
Streams  of  men  and  women,  mostly  young,  were 
setting  toward  each  of  the  exits,  to  Broadway, 
to  Fulton  Street,  to  Dey  Street;  and  he  had  only 
to  drop  into  one  of  them.  He  chose  that  toward 
Dey  Street,  finding  himself  in  the  open  air,  in 
full  exercise  of  his  liberty. 

Once  more  it  was  hard  to  believe  that  there 
was  a  difference  between  this  day  and  other 
days.  It  would  have  been  so  natural  to  go  to 
the  gym  for  a  plunge  or  a  turn  with  the  foils, 
and  then  home  to  supper.  He  discussed  with 
himself  the  possibility  of  a  last  night  with  the 
family,  recoiling  only  from  the  fact  that  it  was 
precisely  there  that  they  would  look  for  him. 
Much  reading  of  criminal  annals  had  printed 
that  detail  on  his  brain — the  poor  wretch  torn 
from  the  warm  shelter  of  his  home,  with  his 
wife's  arms  round  him  and  the  baby  sleeping  in 
the  cradle.  There  was  no  wife  or  baby  in  this 
case;  but  to  have  the  thing  happen  to  himself, 

225 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

with  his  mother  and  the  girls  vainly  trying  to 
stay  the  course  of  the  law,  would  be  worse  than 
going  to  the  chair. 

He  was  in  the  uptown  subway,  with  no  out- 
ward difference  between  himself  and  the  scores 
of  other  young  men  scanning  the  evening  papers. 
Because  he  didn't  know  what  else  to  do,  he  got 
out  at  Chambers  Street.  He  got  out  at  Chambers 
Street  because  there  was  a  ferry  there  which 
would  take  him  over  to  New  Jersey.  He  went 
over  to  New  Jersey  because  it  was  his  habit  at 
this  hour  of  the  day,  and  to  follow  his  habit 
somehow  preserved  his  sanity.  To  be  on  the 
same  side  of  the  river  as  his  home  was  a  faint, 
futile  consolation. 

And  while  on  the  ferryboat  a  new  idea  came 
to  him.  In  the  Erie  station  he  should  find  a 
telephone  booth  from  which  he  could  ring  up  his 
mother  and  inform  her  that  he  was  not  to  be 
home  that  night.  Though  it  would  do  no  good 
in  the  end,  it  would  at  least  save  her  from  im- 
mediate alarm.  Flynn  and  Jackman  were 
unknown  by  face  to  the  family,  and  if  they  rang 
at  the  door  in  search  of  him  they  would  prob- 
ably not  tell  their  tale.  Before  he  reached  the 
other  side  he  had  concocted  a  story  of  which  his 
only  fear  was  as  to  his  ability  to  tell  it  on  the 
wire  without  breaking  down. 

It  was  a  bit  of  good  luck  to  be  answered  by 
Gladys,  whom  he  could  "bluff"  more  easily 
than  the  rest  of  them. 

"Hello,  Gladys!  This  is  Ted.  Tell  ma  I'm 
226 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

in  Paterson  and  shall  not  get  home  to-night  or 
to-morrow  night." 

He  could  hear  Gladys  calling  into  the  interior 
of  the  house: 

"Well,  what  do  you  know  about  that?  Ted's 
at  Paterson  and  not  coming  home  to-night  or 
to-morrow  night."  Into  the  receiver  she  said, 
"But,  Ted,  what  '11  they  say  at  the  bank?" 

"I  may  not  go  back  to  the  bank.  This  is  a 
new  job.  You  remember  the  fellow  I  was  work- 
ing for  on  the  side  ?  Well,  he's  put  me  into  this, 
and  perhaps  I'm  going  to  make  money." 

"Oh,  Ted,"  Gladys  called,  delightedly,  "how 
many  plunks?" 

"It — it  isn't  a  salary,"  he  stammered.  "I — 
I  may  be  in  the  firm.  To-morrow  I  may  have  to 
go  to  Philadelphia.  Tell  ma  not  to  worry — and 
not  to  miss  me.  I'll  try  to  call  up  from 
Philadelphia,  but  if  I  can't —  Well,  anyhow, 
give  my  love  to  ma  and  everybody,  and  if  I'm 
not  home  the  day  after  to-morrow,  don't  think 
anything  about  it." 

He  put  up  the  receiver  before  Gladys  could 
ask  any  more  questions,  and  felt  ready  to  cry 
again.  In  order  not  to  do  that,  he  walked  out 
of  the  station  into  the  street,  where  the  presence 
of  the  crowds  compelled  him  to  self-control. 
Having  nothing  to  do  and  nowhere  to  go,  he 
walked  on  and  on,  getting  some  relief  from  his 
desolation  by  the  mere  fact  of  movement. 

So  he  walked  and  walked  and  walked,  headed 
vaguely  toward  the  outskirts  of  the  town. 

227 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

There  were  vast  marshes  there  into  which  he 
could  stray  and  be  lost.  The  rank  grasses  in  this 
early  August  season  were  almost  as  high  as  his 
shoulders,  so  that  he  could  lie  down  and  be 
beyond  all  human  ken.  His  body  might  not  be 
found  for  weeks,  might  never  be  found  at  all. 
Teddy  Follett  would  simply  disappear,  his  fate 
remaining  a  mystery. 

Toward  seven  o'clock,  the  shabby  suburbs 
began  to  show  their  primrose-colored  lights — a 
twinkle  here,  a  twinkle  there,  stringing  out  in 
longer  streets  to  scattered  bits  of  garland.  Teddy 
felt  hungry.  Counting  his  money  and  finding 
that  he  had  two  dollars  and  thirty-one  cents,  he 
was  sorry  not  to  be  able  to  transmit  the  two 
dollars  to  his  mother. 

Growing  more  and  more  hungry,  and  knowing 
he  must  keep  up  his  nerve,  he  spied  a  little 
bread-and-pastry  shop  just  where  the  houses 
were  thinning  out  and  the  marshes  invading  the 
town,  as  the  ocean  invaded  the  marshes.  On 
entering,  he  asked  for  two  tongue  sandwiches 
and  half  a  dozen  doughnuts.  The  woman  who 
wrapped  up  the  sandwiches  and  dropped  the 
doughnuts  into  a  paper  bag  was  an  English- 
speaking  foreigner  of  the  Scandinavian  type, 
blond,  dumpy,  with  a  row  of  bad  teeth  and 
piercing  blue  eyes.  As  she  performed  her  task, 
she  seemed  not  to  take  her  eyes  from  off  him, 
though  her  smile  was  kind,  and  she  called  his 
attention  to  the  fact  that  she  was  giving  him 
seven  doughnuts  for  his  six. 

228 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

"You  don't  lif  rount  here?"  she  asked,  in 
counting  out  the  change  for  his  dollar. 

"No;   just  going  up  the  road." 

"Well,  call  again,"  she  said,  politely,  as  he 
took  his  parcels  and  went  out. 

Having  eaten  his  two  sandwiches,  he  felt 
better,  in  the  sense  of  being  stronger  and  more 
able  to  face  the  thing  that  had  to  be  done.  He 
was  not  quite  out  on  the  marshes,  the  long,  flat 
road  cutting  straight  across  them  to  the  nearest 
little  town.  The  lights  were  rarer,  but  still 
there  were  lights,  their  saffron  growing  more 
and  more  luminous  as  the  colors  of  the  sunset 
paled  out.  An  occasional  motor  passed  him, 
but  never  a  man  on  foot. 

He  could  have  turned  in  anywhere,  and  per- 
haps for  that  reason  he  put  off  doing  so.  It 
would  be  easier,  he  argued,  to  shoot  himself 
after  dark.  It  was  not  dark  as  yet — only  the 
long  August  gloaming.  Moreover,  the  tramping 
was  a  relief,  soothing  his  nerves  and  working  off 
some  of  his  horror.  He  wished  he  could  go  on 
with  it,  on  and  on,  into  the  unknown,  where  he 
would  be  beyond  recognition.  But  that  was 
just  where  the  trouble  was.  For  the  fugitive 
from  justice  recognition  always  lay  in  wait. 
He  had  often  heard  his  father  say  that  in  the 
banking  business  you  could  get  away  with  a 
thing  for  years  and  years,  and  yet  recognition 
would  spring  on  you  when  least  expected.  As 
for  himself,  recognition  could  meet  him  in  any 
little  town  in  New  Jersey.  They  would  have  his 

229 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

picture  in  the  paper  by  to-morrow — and,  besides, 
what  was  the  use? 

The  dark  was  undeniably  falling  when  he 
noticed  on  the  right  a  lonely  shack  with  nothing 
but  the  marsh  all  round  it.  Coming  nearly 
abreast  of  it,  he  detected  a  rough  path  toward 
it  through  the  grass.  He  had  no  need  of  a  path, 
no  need  of  a  shack,  but,  the  path  and  the  shack 
being  there,  they  offered  something  to  make  for. 
Since  he  was  obliged  to  turn  aside,  he  might  as 
well  do  it  now. 

So  aside  he  turned.  The  path  was  hardly  a 
path,  and  had  apparently  not  been  used  that 
year.  Wading  through  the  dank  grasses  which 
caught  him  about  the  feet,  he  could  hear  small 
living  things  hopping  away  from  his  tread,  or  a 
marsh  bird  rise  with  a  frightened  whir  of  wings. 
Water  gushed  into  his  shoes,  but  that,  he  de- 
clared, wouldn't  matter,  as  he  would  so  soon  be 
out  of  the  reach  of  catching  cold. 

The  building  proved  to  be  all  that  fire  had  left 
of  a  shanty  knocked  together  long  ago,  probably 
for  laborers  working  on  the  road.  The  walls  were 
standing,  and  it  was  not  quite  roofless.  There  was 
no  door,  and  the  window  was  no  more  than  a  hole, 
but  as  he  ventured  within  he  found  the  flooring 
sound.  At  least,  it  bore  his  weight,  and,  what  was 
more  amazing  still,  he  tripped  over  a  rough  bench 
which  the  fire  had  spared  and  the  former  occu- 
pants had  not  thought  worth  the  carting  away. 

It  was  the  very  thing.  Shooting  oneself  was 
something  to  be  performed  with  ritual.  You 

230 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

lay  down,  stretched  yourself  out,  and  did  it  with 
a  hint  of  decency. 

Teddy  groped  his  way.  First  he  drew  the 
pistol  from  his  hip  pocket,  laying  it  carefully  on 
the  floor  and  within  reach  of  his  hand.  Next  he 
sat  down  for  a  minute,  but,  fearing  he  would 
begin  to  think,  lifted  his  feet  to  the  bench, 
lowered  his  back,  and  straightened  himself  to  his 
full,  flat  length.  Putting  down  his  han-^,  he 
found  he  could  touch  the  pistol  easily,  and  .here- 
fore  let  it  lie.  He  let  it  lie  only  because  he  had 
not  yet  decided  where  to  fire — at  his  heart  or 
into  his  temple. 

Outside  the  hut  there  was  a  hoarse,  sleepy 
croak,  then  another,  and  another,  and  another. 
The  dangers  of  light  being  past,  the  frogs  were 
waking  to  their  evening  chant.  Teddy  had  al- 
ways loved  this  dreamy,  monotonous  lullaby, 
reminiscent  of  spring  twilights  and  approaching 
holidays.  He  was  glad  now  that  it  would  be  the 
last  sound  to  greet  his  ears  on  earth.  Since  he 
had  to  go,  it  would  croon  to  him  softly,  cradle 
him  gently,  letting  the  night  of  the  soul  come 
down  on  him  consolingly.  He  was  not  fright- 
ened; he  was  only  tired — oddly  tired,  considering 
where  he  was.  It  would  be  easier  to  fall  asleep 
than  do  anything  else,  listening  to  the  co-ax,  co-ax, 
co-ax,  with  which  the  darkness  round  was  filled. 

And  right  at  that  minute,  Flynn,  with  low 
chuckles  of  laughter,  was  telling  Mrs.  Flynn  of 
the  extraordinary  adventure  of  the  afternoon. 

16  231 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"We  didn't  have  nothin'  on  the  young  guy  at 
all  till  we  seen  him  look  over  at  us  scared-like, 
and  he  tuck  to  his  heels." 

It  was  a  cozy  scene — Flynn,  in  his  shirt  sleeves 
and  slippers,  smoking  his  pipe  in  the  dining-room 
of  a  Harlem  apartment,  while  his  wife,  a  plump, 
pretty  woman,  was  putting  away  the  spoons  and 
forks  in  the  drawer  of  the  yellow-oak  sideboard. 
The  noisy  Flynn  children  being  packed  off  to 
bed,  the  father  could  unbend  and  become 
confidential. 

"It's  about  three  weeks  now  since  Jackman 
put  me  wise  to  money  leakin'  from  Collingham  & 
Law's,  and  we  couldn't  tell  where  the  hole  was. 
First  we'd  size  up  one  fella,  and  then  another; 
but  we'd  say  it  couldn't  be  him  or  him.  We 
looked  over  this  young  Follett  with  the  rest,  but 
only  with  the  rest,  and  found  but  wan  thing 
ag'in'  him." 

"Didn't  he  lose  his  father  a  short  while  back?" 

"Yes;  and  that  was  what  made  us  think  of 
him.  Old  Follett  was  fired  from  the  bank  eight 
or  nine  months  ago,  and  yet  the  family  had  gone 
on  livin'  very  much  as  they  always  done." 

"That  'd  be  to  their  credit,  wouldn't  it?"  Mrs. 
Flynn  suggested,  kindly. 

"It'd  be  to  some  one's  credit;  and  the  thing 
we  wanted  to  know  was  if  it  was  to  Collingham 
&  Law's.  But  we  hadn't  a  thing  on  him.  We 
found  out  he'd  paid  for  the  old  man's  funeral, 
and  the  grave,  and  all  that;  but  whether  old 
Follett  had  left  a  little  wad  or  whether  the 

232 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

young  guy'd  found  it  lyin*  around  loose,  we 
couldn't  make  out  at  all.  And  then  this  after- 
noon, as  Jackman  and  me  was  talkin'  it  over  on 
the  other  side  o'  Broad  Street,  who  should  come 
out  but  me  little  lord!  Well,  wan  look  give  the 
whole  show  away.  The  third  degree  couldn't  ha' 
been  neater.  The  very  eyes  of  him  when  he  seen 
us  on  the  other  side  o'  the  street  says,  *  My  God ! 
they've  got  me!'  So  off  he  goes — and  off  we 
goes — up  Broad  Street — into  Wall  Street— across 
to  Nassau  Street — up  Nassau  Street — round  the 
corner  into  John  Street — up  to  Broadway — over 
Broadway — and  then  we  lost  him.  But  we've 
done  the  trick.  To-morrow,  when  he  comes  to 
the  bank,  we'll  have  him  on  the  grill.  Sooner  or 
later  he'd  ha'  been  on  the  grill,  anyhow." 

"But  suppose  he  doesn't  come?" 

"That  '11  be  a  worse  give-away  than  ever." 

She  turned  from  the  drawer,  asking  of  the 
Follett  family  and  learning  whatever  he  had  to  tell. 

"And  you  say  he's  a  fine  boy  of  about  twenty- 
one." 

"That  'd  about  be  his  age.  Yes,  a  fine,  up- 
standing lad — and  very  pop'lar  with  Jackman 
he's  always  been." 

She  waited  a  minute  before  saying,  "Oh,  Peter, 
I  wish  you'd  let  him  off." 

"Ah,  now,  Tessie,"  he  expostulated,  "there 
you  go  again !  If  you  had  your  way,  there'd  be 
no  law  at  all." 

"Well,  I  wish  there  wasn't." 

He  laughed  with  a  jolly  guffaw. 
233 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"If  there  was  no  law,  and  no  one  to  break  it, 
where'd  your  trip  to  the  beach  be  this  summer,  and 
the  new  Ford  car  I'm  goin'  to  get  for  the  boys? 
Anyhow,  even  if  we  do  get  him  with  the  goods 
on  him,  which  we're  pretty  sure  o'  doin'  now, 
he'll  be  recommended  to  mercy  on  account  of 
his  youth,  and  p'raps  be  let  off  with  two  years." 

"Yes — and  what  '11  he  be  when  he  comes  out  ?" 

Getting  up,  he  pulled  her  to  him,  with  his 
arm  across  her  shoulder. 

"Ah,  now,  Tessie,  don't  be  lookin'  so  far 
ahead.  That's  you  all  over." 

And  he  kissed  her. 

Gladys,  that  evening,  kissed  her  mother,  in 
the  hope  of  kissing  away  her  foreboding.  Lizzie 
had  not  been  satisfied  with  Teddy's  story  on  the 
telephone. 

"I  don't  understand  why  he  didn't  ask  to 
speak  to  me,"  she  kept  repeating. 

"Oh,  momma,"  Gussie  explained  to  her, 
"don't  you  see?  It  was  a  long-distance  call. 
Three  minutes  is  all  he  was  allowed,  and  of 
course  he  didn't  want  to  pay  double.  Here's  his 
chance  to  make  money  that  we've  all  been 
praying  for  since  the  year  one;  and  you  pull  a 
long  face  over  it.  Cheer  up,  momma,  do!  Smile! 
Smile  more!  There!  That's  better.  Ted  said 
himself  that  you  were  not  to  miss  him." 

So  Lizzie  did  her  best  to  smile,  only  saying  in 
her  heart,  "I  don't  understand  his  not  speaking 
to  me" 

234 


CHAPTER  XVII 

TEDDY  woke  to  a  brilliant  August  sunshine, 
and  that  calling  of  marsh  birds  which  is 
not  song.  He  woke  with  a  start  and  with  terror. 
He  was  still  on  the  bench,  though  turned  over  on 
his  side,  and  with  the  pistol  in  view.  He  needed 
a  minute  to  get  his  wits  together,  to  piece  out 
the  meaning  of  the  blackened  walls,  the  sagging 
floor,  and  the  sunlight  streaming  through  the  rent 
in  the  roof.  A  hole  that  had  once  been  a  door 
and  another  that  had  once  been  a  window  let  the 
summer  wind  play  over  his  hot  face,  bringing  a 
soft  refreshment. 

Dragging  himself  to  a  sitting  posture,  his  first 
sensation  was  one  of  relief.  "I'm  alive!"  He 
hadn't  done  the  thing  he  had  planned  last  night ! 
Merciful  sleep  had  nailed  him  to  the  bench, 
keeping  him  motionless,  unconscious.  The  pistol 
had  lain  within  reach  of  his  hand,  and  was  there 
still;  it  could  do  duty  still,  but  for  the  moment 
he  was  alive.  Had  he  ever  asked  God  for  help 
or  thanked  Him  when  it  came,  he  would  have 
gone  down  on  his  knees  and  done  it  now;  but 
the  habit  was  foreign  to  the  Follett  family.  He 
could  only  thank  the  purposeless  Chance,  which 
is  the  god  most  of  us  know  best. 

But  he  was  glad.  Twelve  hours  previously  he 
had  not  supposed  it  possible  ever  to  be  glad 

235 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

again.  It  had  been  a  nightmare,  he  reasoned  now, 
or,  if  not  a  nightmare,  it  had  been  thought  out 
of  focus.  He  hadn't  seen  straight  and  normally. 
It  was  as  if  he  had  been  drunk  or  mildly  insane. 
He  recalled  experiences  during  naval  nights 
ashore,  at  Brest  or  Bordeaux  or  Hampton  Roads, 
when,  after  a  glass  or  two  of  something,  his 
mind  had  taken  on  this  fevered  twist  in  which 
all  life  had  gone  red. 

Bickley  had  read  this  from  the  lines  of  his 
profile.  "Forehead  slightly  concave;  mouth 
and  chin  distinctly  convex;  tends  to  act  before 
he  thinks."  The  other  traits  had  been  satisfac- 
tory, indicating  pluck,  patience,  fidelity,  and 
cheerfulness  of  outlook. 

The  cheerfulness  of  outlook  asserted  itself 
now.  Since  he  was  alive  on  a  glorious  summer 
morning,  the  two  great  assets  of  a  man,  himself 
and  the  outside  world,  were  still  at  his  command. 
Nevertheless,  he  didn't  blink  the  facts. 

"I'm  not  a  thief — but  I  took  the  money. 
They're  after  me,  and  they  mustn't  get  me.  I'll 
shoot  myself  first;  but  I  don't  have  to  shoot 
myself — yet." 

He  would  not  have  to  shoot  himself  so  long 
as  he  was  safe,  and  safety  might  take  many  turns. 
The  abandoned,  half-burnt  sty  in  which  he  had 
found  refuge  was  a  fortress  in  its  very  loneliness. 
Close  to  the  road,  close  to  Jersey  City,  not  very 
far  from  Pemberton  Heights,  it  had  probably  no 
visitor  but  a  toad  or  a  bird  or  a  truant  boy  from 
twelvemonth  to  twelvemonth. 

236 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

His  chief  danger  was  that  of  being  seen.  The 
door  and  the  window  were  both  on  the  side 
toward  the  road.  By  avoiding  the  one  and 
ducking  under  the  other,  he  could  move,  but  he 
could  move  very  little.  That  little,  however, 
would  stretch  his  muscles  and  relieve  the  in- 
tolerable idleness. 

The  idleness,  he  knew,  would  be  irksome.  By 
looking  at  his  watch,  which  had  not  run  down, 
he  found  it  was  six  o'clock.  The  six  o'clock  stir 
was  also  in  the  air.  Motors  had  begun  to  dash 
along  the  road,  and  market  garden  teams  were 
lumbering  toward  the  big  town.  He  was  hungry 
again,  but  with  his  seven  doughnuts  still  in  the 
bag  he  couldn't  starve  to  death. 

By  getting  on  the  floor  he  found  a  peephole 
just  above  the  level  of  the  grass  through  which 
he  could  see  without  detection.  This  must  be 
his  spying  place.  Unlikely  as  it  was  that  anyone 
would  track  him  to  this  lair,  he  must  be  carefully 
on  the  lookout.  What  he  should  do  if  threatened 
with  a  visitor  was  not  very  clear  to  him.  There 
being  no  exit  except  by  the  door,  and  the  door 
being  toward  the  road  from  which  a  visitor  would 
naturally  approach,  there  was  no  escape  on  that 
side.  Escape  being  out  of  the  question,  there 
would  only  remain — the  other  thing.  The  other 
thing  was  always  the  great  possibility.  He  hadn't 
abandoned  the  thought  of  it;  he  had  only  post- 
poned the  necessity.  He  would  live  as  long  as  he 
could ;  and  yet  the  necessity  of  the  other  thing 
would  probably  arise.  If  it  arose,  he  hoped  he 

237 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

should  get  through  it  by  that  tendency  which  he 
recognized  in  himself  as  clearly  as  Mr.  Bickley 
had  read  it  from  his  profile — to  act  before  he 
thought. 

With  this  as  a  possibility,  he  got  down  to  his 
peephole,  put  the  pistol  near  him  on  the  floor, 
and  began  on  his  doughnuts.  For  breakfast,  he 
allowed  himself  three,  keeping  the  rest  for  his 
midday  needs.  When  darkness  fell  he  would 
steal  out  and  buy  more.  He  could  do  this  as 
long  as  his  money  held  out,  and  before  it  was 
spent  something  would  probably  have  happened. 
What  that  something  would  be  he  did  not  fore- 
cast. He  was  in  a  fix  where  forecasting  wasn't 
possible.  The  minute  was  the  only  thing,  and  a 
thing  that  had  grown  precious. 

Even  the  family  had  somehow  become  subor- 
dinate to  that.  In  the  strangeness  of  his  night, 
he  seemed  to  have  traveled  away  from  them.  A 
man  clinging  to  a  spar  on  the  ocean  might  have 
had  this  sense  of  remoteness  from  his  dear  ones 
safe  on  shore.  Since  they  were  safe  on  shore, 
that  would  be  the  main  thing.  Since  his  mother 
and  sisters  could  come  and  go  in  Indiana  Avenue, 
he  could  wish  them  nothing  more.  That  was 
the  all-essential,  and  they  had  it.  Want,  anxiety, 
grief,  "and  no  Teddy  coming  home  in  the  eve- 
nings," were  trifles  as  compared  with  this  priceless 
blessing  of  security. 

So  he  settled  down  amid  filth  and  slime  and  the 
debris  of  charred  wood  to  watch  and  wait  and 
cling  to  his  life  till  he  could  cling  to  it  no  longer. 

238 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Later  that  morning,  Mrs.  Collingham  motored 
from  Marillo  to  see  Hubert  Wray's  much-dis- 
cussed picture,  "Life  and  Death,"  in  a  famous 
dealer's  gallery  in  Fifth  Avenue.  It  had  hung 
there  a  week,  and  though  the  season  was  dead,  it 
was  being  talked  about.  Among  the  few  in  New 
York  who  care  for  the  art  of  painting,  the  picture 
had  "caught  on."  The  important  critics  had 
honored  it  with  articles,  in  which  one  wrote 
black  and  another  white  with  an  equal  authority. 
The  important  middlemen  had  come  in  to  look 
at  it,  saying  to  one  another,  "Here's  a  fellow 
who'll  go  far — en  voild  un  qui  vafaire  son  chemin." 
The  important  connoisseurs  had  made  a  point  of 
viewing  it,  with  their  customary  fear  of  expressing 
admiration  for  the  work  of  a  native  son.  From 
the  few  who  knew,  the  interest  was  spreading  to 
the  many  who  didn't  know  but  were  anxious  to 
appear  as  if  they  did. 

Junia's  introduction  to  the  picture  had  caused 
her  some  chagrin.  She  had  not  ranked  Hubert 
among  the  important  family  acquaintances,  and 
when  he  came  down  to  Coliingham  Lodge,  for  a 
night  or  two,  as  occasionally  he  did,  she  pre- 
sented him  to  only  the  more  negligible  neighbors. 
"A  young  man  Bob  met  in  France,"  was  all  the 
explanation  he  required. 

But  in  dining  out  recently  she  had  been  led 
in  to  dinner  by  a  man  of  unusual  enlightenment, 
with  whose  flair  and  discernment  she  liked  to 
keep  abreast.  To  do  this  she  was  accustomed 
to  fall  back  on  such  scraps  of  reviews  or  art  notes 

239 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

as  drifted  to  her  through  the  papers,  bringing 
them  out  with  that  knack  of  "putting  her  best 
goods  in  the  window"  which  was  part  of  her 
social  equipment.  Books  and  the  theater  being 
too  light  for  her  attention,  she  was  fond  of 
displaying  in  music  and  painting  the  expertise  of 
a  patroness.  She  could  not  only  talk  of  Boldini 
and  Cezanne,  of  Paul  Dukas  and  Vincent  d'Indy, 
but  could  throw  off  the  names  of  younger  men 
just  coming  into  view  as  if  eagerly  following 
their  development. 

Her  neighbor's  comments  on  the  new  picture, 
"Life  and  Death,"  at  the  Kahler  Gallery  were  of 
value  to  her  chiefly  because  they  were  up  to 
date  and  told  her  what  to  say.  "A  reaction 
against  the  cubists  and  post-impressionists  in 
favor  of  an  art  rich  in  color,  suggestion,  and  sig- 
nificance," was  a  useful  phrase  and  one  easy  to 
remember.  But  not  having  caught  the  painter's 
name,  she  felt  it  something  of  a  shock  when, 
with  the  impressiveness  of  one  whose  notice 
confers  recognition,  her  escort  went  on  to  re- 
mark: "I'm  going  to  look  up  this  young 
Hubert  Wray  and  ask  him  down  to  Marillo. 
You  and  Bradley  will  be  interested  in  meeting 
him." 

Junia's  chagrin  was  inward,  of  course,  and 
arose  from  the  fact  of  having  had  a  budding 
celebrity  like  a  tame  cat  about  the  house,  not 
merely  without  suspecting  it,  but  without  keeping 
in  touch  with  the  thing  he  was  creating.  At  the 
same  time,  she  couldn't  have  been  the  woman 

240 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

she  was  had  it  not  been  for  the  faculty  of  tuning 
herself  up  to  any  necessary  key. 

Her  smile  was  of  the  kind  that  grants  no 
superiority  even  to  a  man  of  unusual  en- 
lightenment. 

"You  can't  imagine  how  interested  I  am  in 
hearing  your  opinion  of  the  dear  boy's  work,  and 
so  I've  been  letting  you  run  on.  He  happens  to 
be  a  very  intimate  friend  of  ours — he  comes 
down  to  stay  with  us  every  few  weeks — and  I've 
been  watching  his  development  so  keenly.  I 
really  do  think  that  with  this  picture  he'll  arrive; 
and  to  have  a  man  like  you  agree  with  me  delights 
me  beyond  words." 

It  was  also  the  excuse  she  needed  for  calling 
Hubert  up.  More  than  two  months  had  passed 
since  her  meeting  with  Jennie,  and  the  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  was  still  lying  to  her  credit 
at  the  bank.  She  was  not  unaware  of  a  reason 
for  this,  in  that  Bradley  had  told  her  of  old 
Follett's  death,  and  even  a  "bad  girl"  like 
Jennie  must  be  allowed  some  leeway  for  grief. 
But  Follett  had  been  nearly  two  weeks  in  his 
grave,  and  still  the  application  for  the  twenty- 
five  thousand  didn't  come.  Unless  a  pretext 
could  be  found  for  keeping  Bob  in  South  Amer- 
ica, he  would  soon  be  on  his  way  homeward,  and 
she,  Junia,  was  growing  anxious.  To  be  face  to 
face  with  Hubert  would  give  her  the  oppor- 
tunity she  was  looking  for. 

He  met  her  at  the  street  entrance  to  the  Kahler 
Gallery,  conducting  her  through  the  main  exposi- 

241 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

tion  of  canvases  to  a  little  shrine  in  the  rear. 
It  was  truly  a  shrine,  hung  in  black  velvet, 
and  with  no  lighting  but  that  which  fell  in- 
directly on  the  vivid,  vital  thing  just  sprung 
into  consciousness  of  life,  like  Aphrodite  risen 
from  the  sea  foam.  But,  just  sprung  into  con- 
sciousness of  life,  she  had  been  called  on  at  once 
to  contemplate  death,  eying  it  with  a  mysterious 
spiritual  courage.  The  living  gleam  of  flesh,  the 
marble  of  the  throne,  and  the  skull's  charnel 
ugliness  stood  out  against  a  blue-green  at- 
mosphere, like  that  of  some  other  plane. 

Junia  was  startled,  not  by  the  power  and 
beauty  of  this  apparition,  but  by  something 
else. 

"You've — you've  changed  her,"  she  said,  with 
awed  breathlessness,  after  gazing  for  three  or 
four  minutes  in  silence. 

"You  mean  the  model?" 

She  nodded  a  "Yes,"  without  taking  her  eyes 
from  the  extraordinary  vision. 

"You've  seen  her?"  he  asked,  in  mild  surprise. 

"Just  once." 

"The  figure  is  exact,"  he  explained,  "but  I 
did  have  to  make  changes  in  the  features.  It 
wouldn't  have  done,  otherwise." 

"No,  of  course  not." 

More  minutes  passed  in  silent  contemplation, 
when  she  said: 

"  I  thought  there  was  more  of  the  gleam  of  the 
red  in  amber  in  the  hair.  This  hair  is  a  brown 
with  a  little  red  in  it." 

242 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I  got  it  as  nearly  as  I  could,"  he  felt  it 
enough  to  say.  "The  shade  and  sheen  and  silki- 
ness  of  hair  are  always  difficult." 

After  more  minutes  of  hushed  gazing,  Junia 
made  a  venture.  She  spoke  in  that  insinuating, 
sympathetic  tone  which  in  moments  of  tensity 
a  woman  can  sometimes  take  toward  a  man. 

"You're  in  love  with  her — aren't  you?" 

He  jerked  his  head  in  the  direction  of  the  nude 
woman. 

"With  her?  That  model?  Why,  no!  What 
made  you  think  so?" 

Junia  was  disconcerted. 

"Oh,  only — only  the  hints  that  have  seeped 
through  when  you  didn't  think  you  were  giving 
anything  away." 

He  said,  with  some  firmness: 

"I  never  meant  to  give  that  away — or  to  hint 
that  it  was — that  it  was  love — a  rouleuse  of  the 
studios,  whom  any  fellow  can  pick  up." 

Junia  felt  like  a  person  roaming  aimlessly 
through  sand  who  suddenly  stumbles  on  gold. 
There  was  more  here  than,  for  the  moment,  she 
could  estimate.  All  she  could  see  were  pos- 
sibilities; but  there  was  one  other  point  as  to 
which  she  needed  to  be  sure.  It  was  conceivable 
that  the  thing  might  have  been  painted  long  ago, 
before  Bob's  departure  for  South  America,  in 
which  case  it  would  lose  at  least  some  of  its  value 
for  her  purpose. 

"When  did  you  do  this,  Hubert?" 

"Oh,  just  within  the  last  few  weeks." 
243 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

This  was  enough.  With  her  usual  swiftness  of 
decision,  she  had  her  plans  in  mind. 

"What  are  you  asking?" 

He  named  his  price.  It  was  a  large  one,  but 
her  balance  at  the  bank  was  large.  It  could  be 
put  to  this  use  as  well  as  to  another. 

"I'll  take  it,"  she  said,  after  a  minute's  con- 
sideration, "if  you  could  let  me  have  it  within  a 
few  days." 

Not  to  betray  the  eagerness  he  felt,  he  said 
that  it  would  give  him  publicity  to  keep  it  en 
view  as  long  as  possible. 

"It  will  be  almost  as  much  publicity  to  have  it 
on  view  at  Marillo." 

And  in  the  end  he  agreed  that  this  was  so. 

He  walked  back  to  the  studio  as  if  wings  on  his 
feet  were  lifting  him  above  the  pavement.  It 
was  the  seal  on  his  success.  "Sold  to  a  private 
collector"  would  be  a  bomb  to  throw  among  the 
dealers,  who  had  been  taking  their  time  and 
dickering.  It  was  more  than  the  seal  on  this  one 
success;  it  was  a  harbinger  of  the  next  success. 
And  with  this  thing  behind  him,  the  next  success 
was  calling  to  him  to  begin. 

He  already  knew  what  he  should  begin  on. 
It  was  to  be  called,  "Eve  Tempting  the  Serpent." 
He  was  not  yet  sure  how  he  should  treat  the  idea, 
but  a  lethargic  semihuman  reptile  was  to  be 
roused  to  the  concept  of  evil  by  a  woman's 
beauty  and  abandonment.  The  thing  would  be 
daring;  but  it  couldn't  be  too  daring,  or  it  would 
bring  down  on  him  the  recrudescent  blue-law 

244 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

spirit  already  so  vigorous  through  the  country. 
He  couldn't  afford  a  tussle  with  that  until  he  was 
better  established. 

But  he  had  made  some  sketches,  and  had 
written  to  Jennie  that  he  should  like  to  talk  the 
matter  over  on  that  very  afternoon.  She  had 
written  in  reply  that,  at  last,  she  would  be  free 
to  come.  For  the  first  few  days  after  the  funeral 
she  had  been  either  too  griefstricken  or  too  busy; 
but  now  the  claims  of  life  were  asserting  them- 
selves again  and  she  was  trying  to  respond  to 
them.  He  must  not  expect  her  to  be  gay;  but 
she  would  grow  more  cheerful  in  time. 

So  he  went  back  to  the  studio  to  lunch  and 
to  wait  for  her  coming.  Till  she  had  ceased 
coming  he  hadn't  known  how  much  the  daily 
expectation  of  seeing  her  had  meant  to  him.  The 
very  occasions  on  which  she  had,  as  he  expressed 
it,  played  him  false  had  brought  an  excitement 
which  he  would  have  been  emotionally  poorer 
for  having  missed.  He  could  not  go  through  the 
experience  often;  he  could,  perhaps,  not  go 
through  it  again.  But  for  that  test  he  was  ap- 
parently not  to  be  called  upon.  She  was  coming. 
She  knew  what  she  was  coming  for.  The  very 
fact  that  she  had  written  meant  surrender. 

And  that,  indeed,  was  what  Jennie  had  been 
saying  to  herselr  all  through  the  morning.  Now 
that  there  had  been  this  interval,  she  knew  that 
her  latitude  for  saying  "Yes"  and  acting  "No" 
was  at  an  end.  If  she  went  at  all,  she  must  go  all 
the  way.  To  go  once  more  and  draw  back  once 

245 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

more  would  not  be  playing  the  game.  She  was 
clear  in  her  mind  that  the  day  would  be  decisive. 
As  to  her  decision,  she  was  not  so  sure. 

That  is,  she  was  not  sure  of  its  wisdom,  though 
sure  what  she  would  do.  She  would  do  what  she 
had  meant  to  do  more  than  two  months  earlier. 
There  was  no  reason  why  she  shouldn't,  and  the 
same  set  of  reasons  why  she  should.  Not  only 
were  the  money  and  release  imperative,  but 
Hubert  meant  more  to  her  than  ever.  His  sym- 
pathy through  her  sorrow  had  touched  her  by 
its  very  novelty.  He  had  written,  sent  flowers, 
and  kept  himself  in  the  background.  Bob  would 
have  done  more  and  moved  her  less,  for  the  reason 
that  doing  all  and  giving  all  were  in  his  nature. 
The  rare  thing  being  the  most  precious  thing, 
she  treasured  the  perfunctory  phrases  in  Hubert's 
scrawl  of  condolence  above  all  the  outpourings  of 
Bob's  heart. 

Nevertheless,  she  treasured  them  with  mis- 
givings. The  consciousness  of  being  married  had 
acquired  some  strength  from  watching  the  effect 
of  her  father's  death  on  her  mother.  She  had 
known,  ever  since  growing  up,  that  her  father 
and  mother  had  been  unequally  mated.  It  was 
not  wholly  a  question  of  practical  failure  or 
success — it  was  rather  that  the  balance  of  moral 
support  had  been  so  shifted  between  them  that 
the  mother  had  nothing  to  sustain  her.  "Poor 
momma,"  had  been  Jennie's  way  of  putting  it, 
"has  to  take  the  burden  of  everything.  She's 
got  us  on  her  shoulders,  and  poppa,  too."  And 

246 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

yet,  with  Josiah's  death,  some  prop  of  Lizzie's 
inner  life  seemed  to  have  been  snatched  away. 
She  was  not  weaker,  perhaps,  but  she  was  more 
detached,  and  stranger.  To  her  children,  to  her 
neighbors,  she  had  always  been  strange,  always 
detached,  but  now  the  aloofness  had  become 
more  significant.  With  Josiah  alone  she  had 
lived  in  that  communion  of  things  shared  which 
leads  to  understanding.  Now  that  he  was  gone, 
something  had  gone  with  him,  leaving  Lizzie 
like  an  empty  house. 

Jennie  was  thrown  back  on  what  Bob  had 
repeated  so  often:  "You're  the  other  half  of  me; 
I'm  the  other  half  of  you."  Whether  it  came 
through  some  impulse  of  affinity,  or  whether  it 
was  the  chance  of  conscientiously  living  to- 
gether, Jennie  wasn't  sure;  but  it  began  to  seem 
as  if  in  the  mere  fact  of  marriage  there  was  a 
naturally  unifying  principle.  To  go  against  it 
was,  in  a  measure,  to  go  against  the  forces  of  the 
universe;  and  though  she  had  only  been  nomi- 
nally married  to  Bob,  she  was  preparing  to  go 
against  it.  Had  she  been  a  rebel  at  heart,  it 
would  have  been  easier;  but  she  was  docile, 
loving,  eager  to  be  loved,  with  nothing  more 
daring  in  her  soul  than  the  wish  to  live  at  peace 
with  the  world  she  saw  round  her. 

Bob's  letters  were  disturbing,  too.  In  the  way 
of  a  happy  future,  he  took  everything  for  granted. 
He  reasoned  as  if,  now  that  they  had  gone 
through  a  certain  form  together  and  signed  it 
with  a  parson's  name,  she  had  no  more  liberty 
17  247 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  will  than  a  woman  in  a  harem.  Little  as  she 
was  rebellious,  she  rebelled  against  that,  pre- 
ferring an  element  of  chance  in  her  love  to  a  love 
in  which  there  was  no  choice.  Bob  wrote  as  if 
her  love  was  of  no  importance,  as  if  he  could 
love  enough  for  two — did,  in  fact,  love  enough 
for  two — so  that  the  whole  need  of  loving  was 
taken  off  her  hands. 

I  feel  as  if  my  love  was  the  air  and  you  were  a  plant  to 
grow  in  it.  It's  the  sunshine  to  which  your  leaves  and 
blossoms  will  only  have  to  turn. 

"That's  all  very  well  for  him,"  she  said,  falling 
back  with  a  grimace  on  the  language  Gussie 
brought  home  with  her  from  vaudeville  shows, 
"but  I  ain't  no  blooming  plant." 

Hubert's  love,  she  thought  at  other  times, 
was  like  a  rare  and  precious  cordial,  of  which  a 
few  drops  carefully  doled  out  ran  like  fire  through 
the  veins.  Bob's  was  a  rushing  torrent  which, 
without  saying  with  your  leave  or  by  your  leave, 
carried  you  away.  She  preferred  the  cordial,  of 
which  you  could  take  up  the  glass  and  put  it 
down  according  as  you  wanted  less  or  more;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  when  there  was  a  flood  which, 
without  asking  your  permission,  poured  all  over 
you,  what  were  you  to  do  ?  She  knew  what  she 
meant  to  do;  but  it  was  the  difficulty  of  doing  it 
and  facing  that  terrific  tide  which  made  her 
stand  aghast.  If  Bob  would  only  let  her  alone. . . . 

But,  then,  Bob  couldn't  let  her  alone.  He 
248 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

himself  would  have  argued  that  you  might  as 
well  ask  a  man  to  let  a  hand  or  a  foot  alone  while 
it  is  aching.  At  the  minute  when  Jennie  was 
thinking  these  thoughts  as  she  flitted  about  the 
house,  he  was  seated  at  an  open  hotel  window  on 
the  Santa  Thereza  hill  above  Riode  Janeiro,  look- 
ing down  on  an  iridescent  city  creeping  round 
the  foam-fringed  edges  of  a  turquoise  sea,  and 
saying  to  himself:  "I'm  watching  over  you, 
Jennie.  I'm  here,  but  my  love  is  there  and  fills 
all  the  space  between  us.  I  came  away  and  left 
you  exposed  to  all  sorts  of  trouble.  I  shouldn't 
have  done  that;  I'm  sorry  now  I  did.  I  thought 
that  if  we  were  married  the  rest  would  take 
care  of  itself;  but  I  see  now  it  couldn't.  You're 
having  a  harder  time  than  I  ever  supposed 
you'd  have,  and  you're  having  it  all  alone;  but 
my  love  is  with  you,  Jennie,  and  the  worst  can't 
happen  while  it  protects  you.  Dangers  will 
threaten  you,  but  you'll  go  to  meet  them  with 
my  love  closing  you  in,  and  something  will  ward 
them  off." 

"I  wish  he'd  stop  thinking  about  me  like 
that." 

Jennie's  reference,  while  she  stood  at  the 
mirror  putting  the  last  touches  to  her  costume, 
was  to  this  same  thought  as  expressed  in  the 
letters  she  received  from  South  America.  Its 
appeal  to  her  imagination  was  such  as  to  create 
an  atmosphere  wrapping  her  about  as  a  halo 
wraps  a  saint.  She  couldn't  get  away  from  it. 
In  going  to  meet  Hubert,  as  she  would  do  in  a 

249 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

few  minutes,  it  would  go  with  her,  an  embarrass- 
ing witness  of  the  sin  against  itself. 

For  the  minute,  the  action  of  her  mind  was 
twofold.  She  was  making  this  protest  as  to  Bob 
and  was  also  giving  minute  attention  to  her 
dress.  Not  only  was  it  her  first  appearance  in 
public  since  her  father's  funeral  but  it  was  a 
moment  at  which  the  victim  must  be  neatly 
decked  for  the  altar.  Having  no  money  to  spend 
on  "mourning, "  she  had  put  deft  touches  of  black 
on  a  last  year's  white  summer  suit,  to  which  a 
black  hat  thrown  together  by  Gussie,  with  the 
black  shoes  and  stockings  already  in  her  pos- 
session, added  their  mute  witness  that  she  was 
grieving  for  a  relative.  Having,  moreover,  the 
native  chic  which  counts  for  most  in  the  art  of 
dressing,  she  was  one  more  instance  of  the  girl 
of  the  humbler  walks  in  life  who,  by  some  secret 
of  her  own,  confounds  the  product  of  the  Rue  de 
la  Paix. 

She  was  to  leave  for  the  studio  as  soon  as  her 
mother  got  up  from  her  early-afternoon  rest. 
The  early-afternoon  rest  had  become  a  necessity 
for  Lizzie  ever  since  the  day  when  Josiah  had 
been  laid  away. 

"You'll  call  me  if  Teddy  rings,"  she  had  stipu- 
lated, before  lying  down,  and  Jennie  had  prom- 
ised faithfully. 

As  to  Teddy's  message,  nominally  sent  from 
Paterson,  Lizzie  had  betrayed  a  skepticism  which 
the  three  girls  found  disconcerting.  She  said 
nothing,  but  it  was  precisely  the  saying  nothing 

250 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

that  puzzled  them.  When  they  themselves  grew 
expansive  over  the  things  they  would  buy  with 
the  money  Teddy  was  going  to  make,  the  moth- 
er's faint  smile  was  alarming.  It  was  alarming 
chiefly  because  it  combined  with  other  things  to 
produce  that  effect  of  strangeness  they  had  all 
noticed  in  her  since  their  father  died.  Though 
they  couldn't  define  it  for  themselves,  it  was  as 
if  she  had  renounced  any  further  effort  to  make 
life  fulfill  itself.  She  was  like  a  man  on  a  sinking 
ship,  who,  after  casting  about  as  to  how  he  may 
save  himself,  knows  there  is  no  choice  left  but  to 
go  down,  and  so  becomes  resigned.  Having 
thrown  up  her  hands,  Lizzie  was  waiting  for  the 
waters  to  close  over  her.  Jennie  was  thus  uneasy 
about  her  mother,  as  she  was  uneasy  about  Bob, 
uneasy  about  Hubert,  and,  most  of  all,  uneasy 
about  herself. 

By  the  time  she  was  ready  she  heard  Lizzie 
stirring  in  her  bedroom.  It  was  the  signal  agreed 
upon.  She  was  free  to  go,  which  meant  that  she 
was  free  to  turn  her  back  on  all  her  more  or  less 
sheltered  past  and  strike  out  toward  a  terrifying 
future.  She  felt  as  she  had  always  supposed  she 
would  feel  on  leaving  her  home  on  her  wedding 
day;  and  she  would  do  as  she  had  decided  she 
would  do  in  that  event.  She  would  go  without 
making  a  fuss,  without  anything  to  record  that 
the  going  was  different  from  other  goings,  or 
that  the  return  would  be  different  from  other 
returns.  She  would  make  her  departure  casual, 
without  consciousness,  without  admitted  inten- 

251 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

tions.  She  merely  called  to  her  mother,  there- 
fore, through  the  closed  door,  that  she  was  on 
her  way,  and  her  mother  had  called  out  in 
response,  "Very  well."  This  leave-taking  mak- 
ing things  easier — all  Jennie  had  to  do  was  to 
gulp  back  a  sob. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

BUT  as  Jennie  opened  the  door  to  let  herself 
out,  two  men  were  standing  on  the  cement 
sidewalk  in  front  of  the  grassplots,  examining  the 
house.  They  were  big,  heavily  built  men,  who, 
although  in  plain  clothes,  suggested  the  guardian- 
ship of  law.  It  came  to  Jennie  instantly  that 
their  examination  of  the  house  was  peculiar;  and 
of  that  peculiarity  she  divined  with  equal 
promptness  the  significance.  The  men  de- 
clared afterward  that  in  her  manner  of  standing 
on  the  step  and  waiting  till  they  spoke  to  her 
there  was  the  same  kind  of  "give-away"  as  when 
her  brother  had  eyed  them  across  Broad  Street. 

The  older  and  heavier  of  the  two  advanced 
up  the  walk  between  the  grassplots. 

"This  is  the  Follett  house,  ain't  it,  miss?" 

Jennie  replied  that  it  was. 

"And  you're  Miss  Follett?" 

She  assented  again. 

"Is  your  brother  in?" 

"N-no;  he's  not  in  town." 

The  big  man  turned  toward  his  taller  and 
slighter  colleague,  whatever  he  had  to  say  being 
communicated  by  a  look.  Having  expressed  this 
thought,  he  veered  round  again  toward  Jennie, 
speaking  politely. 

253 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Maybe  we  could  have  a  word  with  you, 
private-like." 

"Won't  you  step  in?" 

Presently  they  were  all  three  seated  in  the 
living  room,  the  big  man  continuing  as  spokes- 
man. 

"Ah,  now,  about  your  brother,  Miss  Follett; 
you're  sure  he  isn't  anywheres  around?" 

The  inference  from  the  tone  was  that  somehow 
Jennie  was  secreting  him. 

"He  isn't  to  my  knowledge.  He  called  up 
last  evening  to  say  that  he  wouldn't  be  home 
to-day,  and  perhaps  not  to-morrow." 

The  two  men  being  seated  within  range  of 
each  other's  eyes,  some  new  understanding  was 
flashed  silently. 

"Did  he,  then?  And  where  would  he  have 
called  up  from?" 

"From  Paterson." 

"  From  Paterson,  was  it  ?  And  what  made  you 
think  it  was  from  Paterson  ? " 

"He  said  so." 

"And  that  was  all  you  had  to  go  by?" 

"That  was  all." 

"Well,  well,  now!  He  said  so,  did  he?  And 
he  didn't  come  home  last  night?" 

Jennie  shook  her  head. 

For  a  third  time  Flynn's  eyes  telegraphed 
something  to  Jackman's,  and  Jackman's  re- 
sponded. What  they  said  to  each  other  Jennie 
didn't  try  to  surmise,  for  the  reason  that  she  was 
listening  to  a  call.  It  was  the  call  that  Teddy 

254 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

had  heard  on  the  night  when  his  father  had 
brought  home  the  news  that  he  was  "fired" — 
the  call  to  assume  responsibilities.  Her  father 
had  gone;  her  mother  was  collapsing;  Teddy  had 
broken  beneath  the  strain.  "And  now  it's  up  to 
me."  Mentally,  she  spoke  the  words  almost 
before  she  was  conscious  of  the  thought.  "And 
that  settles  it."  These  words,  too,  she  spoke 
mentally,  but  in  them  the  reference  was  different. 
The  vision  of  love  and  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars,  of  bliss  for  herself  and  relief  for  the 
family,  which  had  waxed  and  waned  so  often, 
now  faded  out  forever  behind  a  mass  of  storm- 
clouds.  But  of  all  this  she  gave  no  sign  as  she 
waited  for  the  burly  man  to  speak  again. 

"And  when  your  brother  called  up  from 
Paterson — let  us  say  it  was  Paterson — didn't 
you  ask  him  no  questions  at  all?" 

"He  didn't  speak  to  me.  I  wasn't  at  home. 
It  was  to  my  little  sister.  I  understood  that  he 
rang  ofF  before  she  could  ask  him  anything." 

"Oh,  he  did,  did  he?"  The  telegraphy  be- 
tween the  two  men  was  renewed.  "And  didn't 
he  say  nothin'  about  what  had  tuck  him  to  a 
place  like  Paterson?" 

"I  think  he  said  it  was  business." 

"' Business,'  was  it?  Ah,  well,  now!  And 
what  sort  of  business  would  that  be?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"And  would  you  tell  me  now  if  you  did 
know?" 

Jennie  looked  at  him  with  clear,  limpid  eyes. 
2SS 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I'm  not  sure  that  I  would.  I  don't  know 
what  right  you  have  to  ask  me  questions  as  it  is." 

"This  right."  Turning  back  the  lapel  of  his 
coat,  he  displayed  a  badge.  "We  don't  want  to 
frighten  you,  Miss  Follett,  my  friend  and  me, 
we  don't;  but  if  you  know  anything  about  the 
boy,  it  '11  be  easier  in  the  long  run  both  for  him 
and  for  you — " 

"What  do  you  want  him  for?" 

Lizzie's  voice  was  so  deep  that  it  startled.  On 
the  threshold  of  the  little  entry  she  stood,  tall, 
black  robed,  almost  unearthly.  At  the  same 
time  Pansy,  who  had  also  come  downstairs,  crept 
toward  Flynn  with  a  low,  vicious  growl.  Both 
men  stumbled  to  their  feet,  awed  by  something 
in  Lizzie  which  was  more  than  the  majesty  of 
grief. 

"Ah,  now,  we're  sorry  to  disturb  you,  ma'am, 
my  friend  and  me.  We  know  you've  had  trouble, 
and  we  wouldn't  be  for  wantin'  to  bring  more 
into  a  house  where  there's  enough  of  it  already. 
But  when  things  is  duty,  they  can't  be  put  by 
just  because  they're  unpleasant — " 

"Has  my  son  been  taking  money  from  Col- 
lingham  &  Law's?" 

The  spectral  voice  gave  force  to  the  directness 
of  the  question.  Abandoning  the  hint  of  pro- 
fessional bullying  he  had  taken  toward  Jennie, 
Flynn,  with  Pansy's  teeth  not  six  inches  from  his 
calf,  went  a  pace  or  two  toward  the  figure  in  the 
entry. 

"Has  he  been  takin'  money,  that  boy  of  yours  ? 
256 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Well  now,  and  have  you  any  reason  to  think  so, 
ma'am?"' 

"None — apart  from  what  I  hoped." 

"Momma!" 

Jennie  sprang  to  her  mother,  grasping  her  by 
the  arm.  While  Jackman  stood  Hke  an  iron 
figure  in  the  background,  Flynn,  always  with 
Pansy's  teeth  keeping  some  six  inches  from  his 
calf,  advanced  still  another  pace  or  two. 

"Ah,  now,  that's  a  quare  thing,  ma'am,  for 
the  mother  of  a  lad  to  say — that  she  hoped  he 
was  takin'  money." 

"Oh,  don't  mind  her,"  Jennie  pleaded.  "She 
hasn't  been  just — just  right — ever  since  my 
father  died." 

"I  didn't  think  of  it  at  first,"  Lizzie  stated, 
in  a  lifeless  voice.  "I  believed  what  he  told  us, 
that  he  was  making  money  on  the  side.  It  was 
only  latterly  that  I  began  to  suspect  that  he 
wasn't;  and  now  I  hope  he  took  it  from  the 
bank." 

"But,  good  God!  ma'am,  why?  Don't  you 
know  he'll  be  caught — and  what  he'll  get  for  it?" 

"Oh,  he'd  get  that  just  the  same,  if  you  mean 
suffering  and  punishment  and  a  life  of  misery. 
All  I  want  is  that  he  should  be  the  first  to 
strike.  Since  he's  got  to  go  down  before  brute 
power — " 

"Brute  power  of  law  and  order,  ma'am,  if 
you'll  allow  me  to  remind  you." 

She  uttered  a  little  joyless  laugh. 

"Law  and  order!  You'll  excuse  me  for 
257 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

laughing,  won't  you?     I've  heard  so  much  of 
them—" 

"And  you're  likely  to  hear  a  lot  more,  if  this 
is  the  way  o'  things." 

"Oh,  I  expect  to.  They'll  do  me  to  death,  as 
they'll  do  you,  and  as  they  do  everyone  else. 
Law  and  order  are  the  golden  images  set  up  for 
us  to  bow  down  to  and  worship  as  gods;  and  we 
get  the  reward  that's  always  dealt  out  to  those 
who  believe  in  falsehood." 

Flynn  appealed  to  both  Jennie  and  Jackman. 

"I  never  heard  no  one  talk  like  that,  whether 
dotty  or  sane." 

"If  it  was  real  law  and  order,"  Lizzie  con- 
tinued, with  the  same  passionless  intonation, 
"that  would  be  another  thing.  But  it  isn't. 
It's  faked  law  and  order.  It's  a  plaster  on  a  sore, 
meant  to  hide  the  ugly  thing  and  not  to  heal  it. 
It's  to  keep  bad  bad  by  pretending  that  it's 
good — " 

"Ah,  but  bad  as  it  is,  ma'am,"  Flynn  began  to 
reason,  "it's  better  than  stealin' — now,  isn't  it?" 

But  Lizzie  seemed  ready  for  him  here. 

"I  think  I've  read  in  your  Bible  that  the  com- 
mandment, 'Thou  shalt  not  steal,'  was  given  to 
a  people  among  whom  it  was  a  principle  that 
everyone  should  be  provided  for.  If  it  happened 
that  anyone  was  not  provided  for,  there  was 
another  commandment  given  as  to  him,  'Thou 
shalt  not  muzzle  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the 
corn.'  He  was  to  be  free  to  take  what  he  needed." 

Flynn  shook  his  head. 
258 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"That  may  be  in  the  Bible,  ma'am;  but  it 
wouldn't  stand  in  a  court  o'  law." 

"Of  course  it  wouldn't;  only,  the  court  of 
law  is  nothing  to  me." 

"It  can  make  itself  something  to  you,  ma'am, 
if  you  don't  mind  my  sayin'  so." 

"Oh  no,  it  can't!  It  can  try  me  and  sentence 
me  and  lock  me  up;  but  that's  no  worse  than 
law  and  order  are  doing  to  me  and  mine  every 
hour  of  the  day." 

"Oh,  momma,"  Jennie  pleaded,  clinging  to  her 
mother's  arm,  "please  stop — please!" 

"I'm  only  warning  him,  darling.  Law  and 
order  will  bring  him  to  grief  as  it  does  everyone 
else.  How  many  did  it  kill  in  the  war?  Some- 
thing like  twelve  millions,  wasn't  it,  and  could 
anyone  ever  reckon  up  the  number  of  aching 
hearts  it's  left  alive?" 

"Yes,  momma;  but  that  kind  of  talk  doesn't 
do  Teddy  any  good." 

"It  does  if  we  make  it  plain  that  he  was  only 
acting  within  his  rights.  These  people  think 
that  by  passing  a  law  they  impose  a  moral  duty. 
What  nonsense!  I  want  my  son  to  be  brave 
enough  to  strike  at  such  a  theory  as  that.  It's 
true  that  they  '11  strike  back  at  him,  and  that 
they  have  the  power  to  crush  him — only,  in  the 
long  run  he'll  be  the  victor." 

Flynn  looked  at  Jennie  in  sympathetic  apology. 

"All  right  now,  Miss  Follett.  I  guess  my 
friend  and  me'li  be  goin'  along — " 

"You'll  do  just  as  you  like  about  that,"  Lizzie 
259 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

interposed,  with  dignity;  "but  if  you  see  my 
son  before  I  do,  tell  him  not  to  be  sorry  for 
what  he's  done,  and  above  all  not  to  think  that  I 
blame  him.  'Thou  shalt  not  muzzle  the  ox  that 
treadeth  out  the  corn.'  When  you  do,  the  eighth 
commandment  doesn't  apply  any  longer." 

Jennie  followed  her  visitors  to  the  doorstep. 
After  her  mother's  reckless  talk,  they  seemed  like 
friends,  as,  indeed,  at  bottom  of  their  kindly 
hearts  they  could  easily  have  been.  They 
brought  no  ill  will  to  their  job — only  a  convic- 
tion that  if  Teddy  Follett  was  a  thief,  they  must 
"get  him." 

"Does — does  Mr.  Collingham  know  that  all 
this  is  going  on?" 

She  asked  her  question  in  trepidation,  lest 
these  men,  trained  to  ferret  out  whatever  was 
most  hidden,  should  be  able  to  read  her  secret. 
It  was  Jackman  who  shouldered  the  duty  of 
answering.  He  seemed  more  laconic  than  his 
colleague,  and  more  literate. 

"We  don't  trouble  Mr.  Collingham  with 
trifles.  If  it  was  a  big  thing — " 

So  Jennie  was  left  with  that  consolation — that 
it  was  not  a  big  thing.  How  big  it  was  she  could 
only  guess  at,  but,  whatever  the  magnitude,  she 
had  no  doubt  at  all  but  that  it  was  "up  to  her." 
She  got  some  inspiration  from  the  little  word 
"up."  There  was  a  lift  in  it  that  made  her 
courageous. 

Nevertheless,  when  she  returned  to  the  living 
room,  finding  her  mother  seated,  erect  and 

260 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

stately,  in  an  armchair,  with  Pansy  gazing  at 
her  with  eyes  of  quenchless,  infinite  devotion, 
Jennie  knew  a  qualm  of  fear. 

"Oh,  momma,  wouldn't  it  be  awful  if  Teddy 
had  to  go  to  jail?" 

"It  would  be  awful  or  not,  just  as  you  took 
it.  If  you  thought  he  went  to  jail  as  a  thief,  it 
would  be  awful,  but  if  you  saw  him  only  as  the 
martyr  of  a  system,  you'd  be  proud  to  know  he 
was  there." 

"Oh,  but,  momma,  what's  the  good  of  saying 
things  like  that?" 

"What's  the  good  of  letting  them  throw  you 
down,  a  quivering  bundle  of  flesh,  before  a  Jugger- 
naut, and  just  being  meekly  thankful?  That's 
what  your  father  and  I  have  always  done,  and, 
now  that  the  wheels  have  passed  over  him,  I  see 
the  folly  of  keeping  silent.  I  may  not  do  any  good 
by  speaking,  but  at  least  I  speak.  When  they 
muzzle  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn,  it  isn't 
much  wonder  if  the  famished  beast  goes  mad. 
Did  you  ever  see  a  mad  ox,  Jennie?  Well,  it's 
a  terrible  sight — the  most  patient  and  laborious 
drudge  among  animals,  goaded  to  a  desperation 
in  which  he's  conscious  of  nothing  but  his 
wrongs  and  his  strength.  They  generally  kill 
him.  It's  all  they  can  do  with  him — but,  of 
course,  they  can  do  that." 

"  So  that  it  doesn't  do  the  ox  much  good  to  go 
mad,  does  it?" 

"Oh  yes;  because  he  gets  out  of  it.  That's 
the  only  relief  for  us,  Jennie  darling — to  get  out 

261 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  it.  I  begin  to  understand  how  mothers  can 
so  often  kill  themselves  and  their  children. 
They  don't  want  to  leave  anyone  they  love  to 
endure  the  sufferings  this  world  inflicts." 

From  these  ravings  Jennie  was  summoned  by 
the  tinkle  of  the  telephone  bell. 

"Teddy!"  cried  the  mother,  starting  to  her 
feet. 

"No;  it's  Mr.  Wray.  I  knew  he'd  ring  me  if 
I  didn't  turn  up." 

The  instrument  was  in  the  entry,  and  Jennie 
felt  curiously  calm  and  competent  as  she  went 
toward  it.  All  decisions  being  taken  out  of  her 
hands,  she  no  longer  had  to  doubt  and  calculate. 
The  renunciations,  too,  were  made  for  her.  She 
was  not  required  to  look  back,  only  to  go  on. 

In  answer  to  the  question,  "Is  this  Mrs. 
Follett's  house?"  she  replied,  as  if  the  occasion 
were  an  ordinary  one: 

"Yes,  Mr.  Wray.  I'm  sorry  I  can't  come  to 
the  studio." 

"Oh!  so  it's  you!  You  can't  come — what? 
Then  you  needn't  come  any  more." 

"Yes;  that's  what  I  thought.  I  see  now  that 
— that  I  can't." 

"Well,  of  all — "  He  broke  off  in  his  expostu- 
lation to  say:  "Jennie,  for  God's  sake,  what's 
the  matter  with  you  ?  What  are  you  afraid  of? " 

"I'm  not  afraid  of  anything,  Mr.  Wray;  but 
there's  a  good  deal  the  matter  which  I  can't 
explain  on  the  telephone." 

"Do  you  want  me  to  come  over  there?" 
262 


THE  EMPTY  SACK     j' 

"No;  you  couldn't  do  any  good." 

"Is  it  money?" 

"No."  She  remembered  the  accumulation  of 
untouched  bills  and  checks  in  her  glove-and- 
handkerchief  box  upstairs.  "I've  got  plenty  of 
money.  There's  nothing  you  could  do,  thank 
you." 

There  was  a  pause  before  he  said : 

"Then  it's  all  off?    Is  that  what  you  mean?" 

"Isn't  it  what  you  meant  yourself  only  a 
minute  ago?" 

"Oh,  well,  you  needn't  stake  your  life  on 
that." 

She  began  to  feel  faint.  It  cost  her  more  to 
stand  there  talking  than  she  had  supposed  it 
would  when  she  took  up  the  receiver. 

"I'm  afraid  I  must — must  stake  my  life  on 
that.  I — I  can't  stay  now.  I  can't  come  any 
more  to  see  you,  either.  I've — I've  given  up 
posing.  G — good-by." 

She  heard  him  beginning  to  protest  from  the 
other  end. 

"No,  Jennie!    Wait!     For  God's  sake!" 

But  her  putting-up  of  the  receiver  cut  them 
off  from  each  other. 

"So  that's  all  over,"  she  said  to  herself,  turning 
again  into  the  living  room. 

But  she  said  it  strongly,  as  Lizzie  had  many 
a  time  said  similar  things  on  witnessing  the 
death  of  hopes,  with  desolation  in  the  heart, 
perhaps,  but  no  wish  to  cry. 

Meanwhile,    Flynn    and    Jackman,    trudging 
18  263 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

toward  the  car  station  in  the  square,  were  discuss- 
ing this  strange  case. 

"That  was  a  funny  line  o'  talk  about  the  ox 
treadin'  out  the  corn.  I  never  heard  nothin'  like 
that  in  our  church." 

But  Jackman,  being  a  Methodist  and  a  student 
of  the  Bible  before  coming  to  New  York  and 
giving  himself  to  detective  work,  was  able  to 
explain. 

"That's  in  the  Old  Testament,  to  begin  with; 
but  Paul  takes  it  up  and  says  that,  though  it 
was  meant,  in  the  first  place,  to  apply  to  the 
animals,  its  real  application  is  to  man.  'That  he 
that  ploweth  may  plow  in  hope,  and  that  he 
that  thresheth  in  hope  should  be  partaker  of 
his  hope' — that's  the  way  it  runs.  That  every- 
one should  get  a  generous  living  wage  and  not 
be  cheated  of  it  in  the  end  is  the  way  you  might 
put  it  into  our  kind  of  talk." 

"Is  it  now?  And  it  do  seem  fair — don't  it? — 
for  all  the  old  woman  yonder  is  so  daft.  And 
would  that  Paul  be  the  same  Saint  Paul  as  we've 
got  in  our  church?" 

"Oh,  the  very  same." 

"Would  he  now?  And  you  a  Protestant! 
That's  one  thing  I've  often  wondered — why 
there  had  to  be  so  many  religions  and  everyone 
wasn't  a  Catholic.  It  'd  be  just  as  easy,  and  cost 
us  less.  Ah,  well!  It's  a  quare  world,  and  that 
poor  woman's  had  a  powerful  dose  o'  trouble. 
I  don't  wonder  she's  got  wheels  in  her  head. 
Do  you?  Maybe  you  and  me'd  have  them  if 

264 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

we'd  gone  through  the  same."  Having  thus 
worked  up  to  his  appeal,  he  plunged  into  it.  "I 
know  wan  little  woman  'd  be  glad  if  I  was  to 
come  home  to-night  and  tell  her  we'd  called  the 
thing  off.  That's  my  Tessie.  It's  amazin'  how 
she's  set  her  heart  on  my  not  trackin'  down  this 
boy." 

"Not  to  track  him  down  would  be  to  compound 
a  felony,"  Jackman  replied,  severely. 

"Ah,  well!  So  it  would,  now.  You  sure  have 
got  the  right  dope  there,  Jackman,  and  that  I'll 
tell  Tessie.  I'll  say  I'd  be  compounding  a  felony, 
and  them  words  '11  scare  her  good." 

So  Flynn,  too,  resigned  himself,  putting  on 
once  more  the  mask  of  craft  and  implacability 
that  was  part  of  his  stock  in  trade,  and  which 
Jackman  rarely  took  off. 

And  all  that  day  Teddy  lay  crouched  in  his 
lair  with  his  eye  glued  more  or  less  faithfully  to 
the  peephole.  Except  from  hunger,  he  had 
suffered  but  little,  and  the  minutes  had  been 
too  exciting  to  seem  long  in  going  by.  It  was 
negative  excitement,  springing  from  what  didn't 
happen;  but  because  something  might  happen, 
and  happen  at  any  instant,  it  was  excitement. 
From  morning  to  midday,  and  from  midday  on 
into  the  afternoon,  cars,  carts,  and  pedestrians 
traveled  in  and  out  of  Jersey  City,  each  spelling 
possible  danger.  Now  and  then  a  man  or  a 
vehicle  had  paused  in  the  road  within  calling 
distance  of  the  shanty.  For  two  minutes,  for 

265 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

five,  or  for  ten  at  a  time,  Teddy  lay  there  won- 
dering as  to  their  intentions  and  trying  to  make 
up  his  mind  as  to  his  own  course.  Whether  to 
shoot  himself  or  make  a  bolt  for  it,  or  if  he  shot 
himself  whether  it  should  be  through  the  temple 
or  the  heart,  were  points  as  to  which  he  was  still 
undecided.  He  would  get  inspiration,  he  told 
himself,  when  the  time  came.  He  had  often 
heard  that  in  crises  of  peril  the  brain  worked 
quicker  than  in  moments  of  tranquillity;  and 
perhaps,  after  all,  a  crisis  of  peril  might  not  lie 
before  him. 

In  a  measure,  he  was  growing  used  to  his 
situation  as  an  outlaw;  he  was  growing  used  to 
the  separation  from  the  family.  It  was  not  that 
he  loved  them  less,  but  that  he  had  moved  on 
and  left  them  behind.  He  could  think  of  them 
now  without  the  longing  to  cry  he  had  felt 
yesterday,  while  the  desperation  of  his  plight 
centered  his  thought  more  and  more  upon  him- 
self. If  he  didn't  have  to  shoot  himself,  he 
planned,  in  as  far  as  plans  were  possible,  to  sneak 
away  into  the  unknown  and  become  a  tramp. 
He  couldn't  do  it  yet,  because  the  roads  were 
probably  being  watched  for  him;  but  by  and 
by,  when  the  hunt  had  become  less  keen.  .  .  . 

Seven  doughnuts  swallowed  without  a  drop 
of  water  being  far  from  the  nourishment  to 
which  he  was  accustomed,  he  waited  with  pain- 
ful eagerness  for  nightfall.  When  the  primrose- 
colored  lights  up  and  down  the  road  and  along 
the  ragged  fringe  of  the  town  were  deepening  to 

266 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

orange,  he  crept  forth  cautiously.  Even  while 
half  hidden  by  the  sedgy  grasses,  he  felt  horribly 
exposed,  and  when  he  emerged  into  the  open 
highway,  the  eyes  of  all  the  police  in  New  York 
seemed  to  spy  him  through  the  twilight.  Never- 
theless, he  tramped  back  toward  the  dwellings 
of  men,  doing  his  best  to  hide  his  face  when 
motor  lights  flashed  over  him  too  vividly. 

Unable  to  think  of  anything  better  than  to 
return  to  the  friendly  woman  who  had  given 
him  seven  doughnuts  for  his  six,  he  found  her 
behind  her  counter,  in  company  with  a  wispy 
little  girl. 

"Ah,  good-evening.  Zo  you'f  come  ba-ack. 
You  fount  my  zandwiches  naice." 

Teddy  replied  that  he  had,  ordering  six,  with 
a  dozen  of  her  doughnuts.  Her  manner  was  so 
affable  that  he  failed  to  notice  her  piercing  eyes 
fixed  upon  him,  nor  did  he  realize  how  much  a 
young  man's  aspect  can  betray  after  twenty- 
four  hours  without  water  to  wash  in,  as  well  as 
without  hairbrush  or  razor.  He  thought  of  him- 
self as  presenting  the  same  neat  appearance  as 
on  the  previous  evening;  but  the  woman  saw 
him  otherwise. 

"I  wonder  if  I  could  have  a  glass  of  water?" 
he  asked,  his  throat  almost  too  parched  to  let 
the  words  come  out. 

"But  sairtainly."  She  turned  to  the  child, 
whispering  in  a  foreign  language,  but  using  more 
words  than  the  command  to  fetch  a  glass  of  water 
would  require. 

267 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

When  the  child  came  back,  Teddy  swallowed 
the  water  in  one  long  gulp.  The  woman  asked 
him  if  he  would  like  another  glass,  to  which  he 
replied  that  he  would.  More  instructions  fol- 
lowed, and  while  the  woman  tied  up  the  sand- 
wiches the  little  girl  came  back  with  the  second 
glass.  This  Teddy  drank  more  slowly,  not  no- 
ticing as  he  did  so  that  the  little  girl  slipped 
away. 

Nor  did  he  notice  as  he  left  the  shop  and  turned 
westward  into  the  gloaming,  that  the  child  was 
returning  from  what  seemed  like  a  hasty  visit  to 
a  neighbor's  house  across  the  street.  Still  less 
did  he  perceive,  when  the  comforting  loneliness  of 
the  marshes  began  once  more  to  close  round  him, 
that  a  big,  husky  figure  was  stalking  him.  It 
had  come  out  of  one  of  the  tenements  over  the 
way  from  the  pastry  shop,  apparently  at  a  sum- 
mons from  the  wispy  little  girl.  Like  the  men 
whom  Jennie  had  seen  eying  the  house  in  the 
afternoon,  he  suggested  the  guardianship  of  law, 
even  though  he  was,  so  to  speak,  in  undress 
uniform.  His  duties  for  the  day  being  over,  he 
had  plainly  been  taking  his  ease  in  slippers, 
trousers,  and  shirt.  Even  now  he  was  bare- 
headed, pulling  on  his  tunic  as  he  went  along. 

He  didn't  go  very  far,  only  to  a  point  at  which 
he  could  see  the  boy  in  front  of  him  turn  into  the 
unused  path  that  led  to  the  old  shack.  Where- 
upon he  nodded  to  himself  and  turned  back  to 
his  evening  meal. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

JENNIE'S  chief  hesitation  was  as  to  cashing 
the  checks,  not  because  the  teller  at  the 
Pemberton  National  Bank  didn't  know  her, 
but  because  he  did.  To  present  a  demand 
for  money  made  out  to  Jane  Scarborough 
Follett,  and  signed,  "R.  B.  Collingham,  Jr.," 
was  embarrassing. 

But  she  had  grown  since  the  previous  after- 
noon, and  embarrassment  sat  on  her  more 
lightly.  Like  Teddy  marooned  on  the  marshes, 
she  seemed  to  have  moved  on,  leaving  her  old 
self  behind.  Now  she  had  things  to  do  rather 
than  things  to  think  about.  One  fact  was  a 
relief  to  her;  she  was  no  longer  under  the  neces- 
sity of  betraying  Bob. 

So  she  cashed  her  checks,  and  counted  her 
money,  finding  that  she  had  two  hundred  and 
forty-five  dollars.  She  didn't  know  how  much 
Teddy  had  taken  from  the  bank;  possibly  more 
than  this,  possibly  not  so  much;  but  whatever 
the  sum,  this  would  go  at  least  part  of  the  way 
toward  meeting  it.  If  she  could  meet  it  alto- 
gether, then,  she  argued,  the  law  couldn't  touch 
him. 

On  arriving  at  the  bank  her  first  sensation 
was  one  of  confusion.  There  seemed  to  be  no 

269 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

one  in  particular  to  whom  to  state  her  errand. 
Men  were  busy  in  variously  labeled  cages,  and 
more  men  beyond  them  sat  at  desks  within  pens. 
Two  or  three  girls  moved  about  with  documents 
in  their  hands,  and  there  was  a  distant  click  of 
typewriters.  People  passed  in  and  out  of  the 
bank,  occupied  with  their  own  affairs,  and  every- 
one, clerk  and  client  alike,  had  apparently  a 
definite  end  in  view.  It  was  like  coming  up 
against  a  blank  wall  of  business,  leaving  no 
opening  through  which  to  slip  in. 

The  weakest  point  seemed  to  be  at  a  counter 
beneath  the  illuminated  sign,  "Statements," 
where  two  ladies  waited  for  custom,  conversing 
in  the  interim.  Jennie  stood  unnoticed  while 
the  speaker  for  the  moment  finished  her  narra- 
tion, bringing  it  to  its  conclusion  plaintively. 

"So  when  mother  called  in  the  doctor,  it  turned 
out  to  be  a  very  bad  case  of  ty-phoid.  State- 
ment?" 

The  question  at  the  end  being  directed  toward 
Jennie,  the  latter  asked  if  she  could  see  Mr. 
Collingham.  The  reply  was  sharp;  the  tone 
quite  different  from  that  of  the  domestic  anec- 
dote of  which  she  had  just  heard  a  portion. 

"Next  floor.  Take  the  elevator.  Ask  for  Miss 
Ruddick."  The  voice  resumed  its  plaintiveness. 
"  So  we  had  him  moved  into  the  corner  bedroom, 
and  sent  for  a  trained  nurse — " 

On  getting  out  of  the  lift,  Jennie  found  herself 
in  a  sort  of  lobby  where  applicants  for  interviews 
sat  with  the  hangdog  look  which  such  postulants 

270 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

generally  wear.  A  brisk  little  Jewess  seated  at 
a  desk  murmured  the  name  of  each  newcomer 
into  a  telephone,  after  which  there  was  nothing 
to  do  but  take  a  chair  and  wait  upon  events. 
Now  and  then  some  one  came  out  from  his  con- 
ference, whereupon  a  messenger  girl,  generally 
of  Slavic  or  Hebraic  type,  would  summon  his 
successor. 

It  was  nearly  an  hour  before  Jennie  was  called 
to  the  office  of  Miss  Ruddick,  who,  with  her  prac- 
ticed method  of  dealing  with  the  importunate, 
prepared  to  put  her  rapidly  through  her  paces 
and  land  her  again  at  the  lift.  This  Miss  Rud- 
dick did,  not  so  much  with  the  mimimum  of 
courtesy  as  with  the  maximum  of  conscientious- 
ness. Her  aim  was  to  save  Jennie's  time  as  well 
as  her  own,  in  the  altruistic  spirit  of  Mr.  Bickley's 
principles. 

"How  do  you  do?  Are  you  the  daughter  of 
the  Mr.  Follett  who  used  to  be  with  us  here? 
So  sorry  for  your  loss,  though  it  may  be  a  release 
for  him,  poor  man.  We  never  know,  do  we? 
Now  what  is  it  I  can  do  for  you?" 

Jennie  said  again  that  she  hoped  to  see  Mr. 
Collingham. 

"I  think  you'd  better  tell  your  errand  to  me." 

"I  couldn't.    I  can  only  tell  it  to  him." 

In   saying    this  she  supposed    Miss   Ruddick 

would  understand  the  reference  to  be  to  Teddy, 

whose  story  must  by  this  time  be  ringing  through 

the  bank.     In  spite  of  what  Jackman  had  said 

on  the  previous  afternoon,  they  couldn't  keep  so 

271 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

serious  a  crime  secret  for  more  than  a  matter  of 
hours.  But  Miss  Ruddick  only  seemed  dis- 
pleased by  Jennie's  insistence,  answering  coldly, 

"If  it's  a  job  you're  looking  for,  the  best  per- 
son to  see  would  be — " 

And  just  then  the  communicating  door  opened 
and  Collingham  himself  came  out.  He  was 
about  to  give  some  order  to  Miss  Ruddick  and 
pass  on  when  Jennie  rose  in  such  a  way  that  his 
eye  fell  upon  her.  When  a  man's  eye  fell  upon 
Jennie  his  attention  was  generally  arrested.  In 
this  case,  it  was  the  more  definitely  arrested,  for 
the  reason  that  Jennie,  timidly  and  tremblingly, 
gave  signs  of  having  a  request  to  make. 

"You  wish  to  speak  to  me?" 

At  this  condescension  Miss  Ruddick  was 
amazed,  but,  the  responsibility  being  taken  off 
her  hands,  she  was  already  capturing  the  minutes 
by  being  "back  on  her  job,"  according  to  her 
favorite  expression.  Jennie  could  hardly  speak 
for  awe.  She  recalled  what  Mrs.  Collingham  had 
said — a  hard,  stern,  ruthless  man,  who  kept  her, 
her  son,  and  her  daughter  as  puppets  on  his 
string.  If  he  so  treated  his  own  flesh  and  blood, 
how  would  he  treat  her? 

Following  him  into  the  private  office,  she  re- 
minded herself  that  she  must  keep  her  head. 
She  had  come  on  a  specific  business,  and  to  that 
business  sne  must  confine  herself.  Her  other 
relations  with  this  terrible  man  she  must  leave 
to  his  son  to  deal  with. 

"Your  name  is — " 

272 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

His  tone  was  courteous.  They  were  both 
seated  now — he  at  his  desk,  she  in  a  small  chair 
at  a  respectful  distance.  The  question  surprised 
her,  for  the  reason  that  in  her  confusion  she  sup- 
posed that  her  identity  was  known  to  him. 

"I'm  Jennie  Follett."  His  visible  start  did 
not  make  her  situation  easier.  She  remembered 
that  Mrs.  Collingham  had  said  that  if  he  knew 
of  the  tie  between  herself  and  Bob  he  would  dis- 
inherit him  on  the  spot.  Just  what  was  implied 
by  that  she  didn't  understand,  but  it  suggested 
all  that  was  most  dramatic  in  the  movies.  To 
disarm  his  suspicions  in  this  direction,  she  hurried 
on  to  add,  "I  came  about  my  brother." 

He  relaxed  slightly,  leaning  on  the  desk  and 
examining  her  closely. 

"Oh,  your  brother!" 

"Yes,  sir.  I  don't  know  how  much  money 
he's  been  taking  from  the  bank — " 

Collingham's  brows  contracted. 

"Wait  a  minute.  Has  your  brother  been 
taking  money  from  the  bank?" 

At  the  thought  that  she  might  be  making  a 
false  step,  Jennie  was  appalled. 

"Oh,  don't  you  know  that  yet,  sir?" 

"Don't  I  know  it  yet?  I  don't  know  what 
you're  talking  about  at  all." 

So  the  whole  thing  had  to  be  explained.  Two 
men  had  appeared  on  the  previous  afternoon  in 
Indiana  Avenue,  accusing  Teddy  of  systematic 
robbery.  Teddy  had  so  far  corroborated  the 
charge  that  he  had  absented  himself  from  home 

273 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

and  work.  He  had  called  up  once,  nominally 
from  Paterson,  but  the  two  detectives  didn't 
believe  that  it  was.  In  any  case,  she  had  a  little 
money  of  her  own — her  very  own — two  hundred 
and  forty-five  dollars  it  was — and  as  far  as  it 
would  go  she  had  come  to  make  restitution.  If 
it  wasn't  enough,  they  would  sell  the  house  as 
soon  as  they  could  get  it  on  the  market  and  pay 
up  the  balance,  if  he  would  only  give  the  order 
that  Teddy  shouldn't  be  sent  to  jail. 

Emboldened  by  his  concentration  on  her  story 
and  herself,  she  took  out  the  roll  of  bills  from  her 
bag,  enlarging  on  her  plea. 

"You  see,  sir,  it  was  this  way.  After  my 
father  had  to  leave  the  bank  last  fall,  Teddy  had 
to  be  our  chief  support,  just  on  his  eighteen  a 
week.  My  two  little  sisters  left  school  and  went 
to  work;  but  that  didn't  bring  in  much.  Then 
there  were  the  taxes,  and  the  mortgages,  and  the 
expenses  of  my  father's  funeral,  besides  six  of 
us  having  to  eat — " 

"You  were  working,  too,  weren't  you?" 

"Yes,  sir;  I  was  posing.  But  I  only  earned 
six  a  week." 

"Only?" 

Based  on  a  memory  of  his  own  of  something 
Junia  had  said — "a  mousey  little  thing  with  a 
veneer  of  modesty,  but  mercenary  isn't  the  word 
for  her" — there  was  an  implication  in  this 
"Only?"  which  escaped  Jennie's  simplicity. 

"Yes,  sir;  that  was  all.  Somehow  I  couldn't 
get  the  work.  Nobody  seemed  to  want  me." 

274 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

He  pointed  at  her  roll  of  bills. 

"Then  where  did  you  get  the  money  you're 
holding  in  your  hand?" 

The  question  was  unexpected  and  confounding. 
She  must  either  answer  it  truly  or  not  answer  it 
at  all.  If  she  answered  it  truly,  she  not  only 
exposed  Bob,  but  she  exposed  herself  to  the  ut- 
most rigor  of  his  wrath.  She  didn't  care  about 
herself;  she  didn't  care  much  about  Bob;  she 
cared  only  about  Teddy.  The  utmost  rigor  of 
this  man's  wrath  would  send  him  to  jail  as  easily 
as  she  could  brush  a  fly  through  an  open  window. 
She  could  say  nothing.  She  could  only  look  at 
him  helplessly,  with  lips  parted,  eyes  shimmering, 
and  the  hot  color  flooding  her  face  pitiably. 

It  was  the  kind  of  situation  in  which  no  man 
with  the  heart  of  a  man  could  be  hard  on  any 
little  girl;  besides  which,  Collingham  looked  on 
this  silent  confession  as  providential.  It  would 
enable  him  to  reason  with  Bob,  if  it  ever  came  to 
that,  and  tell  him  what  he,  the  father,  knew  at 
first  hand  and  from  his  own  experience.  Other- 
wise he  brought  no  moral  judgment  to  bear  on 
poor  Jennie,  and  condemned  her  not  at  all. 

"Just  wait  a  minute,"  he  said,  in  a  kindly  tone, 
getting  up  as  he  spoke.  "I'll  go  and  straighten 
the  thing  out." 

Left  alone,  Jennie  had  these  concluding  words 
to  strengthen  her.  He  would  straighten  the  thing 
out.  That  meant  probably  that  Teddy  wouldn't 
have  to  go  to  jail,  and  beyond  this  relief  she 
didn't  look.  It  would  be  everything.  Nothing 

275 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

else  would  matter.  He  might  be  dismissed  from 
the  bank;  they  might  starve;  but  the  great 
thing  would  be  accomplished. 

It  was  a  half  hour  or  more  before  he  re- 
turned, and  when  he  did  he  looked  worried. 
"Troubled"  would  perhaps  be  a  better  word, 
since  even  Jennie  could  see  that  his  thoughts 
were  farther  away  and  deeper  down  than  the 
incidents  on  the  surface.  He  spoke  almost 
absent-mindedly. 

"I  find  there's  been  a  leakage  for  some  little 
time  past,  and  they've  had  difficulty  in  fixing 
where  the  trouble  was.  Now  I'm  sorry  to  say 
it  looks  as  if  it  was  your  brother.  There's  hardly 
any  doubt  about  that — " 

"You  see,  sir,"  she  pleaded,  "it  was  so  hard 
for  him  not  to  be  able  to  do  anything  when  my 
father  was  so  ill  and  my  mother  worried  and  the 
bills  piling  up — they  stopped  our  credit  nearly 
everywhere — and  the  tax  people — they  were  the 
worst  of  all." 

"Yes,  yes;  I  quite  understand.  And  I've  told 
them  not  to  press  the  matter  further.  Flynn  and 
Jackman,  the  two  men  you  saw  yesterday,  are 
out  for  the  minute;  but  when  they  come  in  they 
are  to  report  to  me.  I  don't  suppose  we  can  take 
your  brother  back;  but  I'll  see  what  I  can  do  for 
him  elsewhere."  He  rose  to  end  the  interview, 
so  that  Jennie  rose,  too.  "You  can  keep  that 
money,"  he  added,  nodding  toward  her  roll  of 
bills.  "You  were  not  responsible,  and  there's 
no  reason  at  all  why  you  should  pay." 

276 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

When  Jennie  protested,  he  merely  escorted 
her  to  the  door,  which  he  held  open. 

"No,  don't  thank  me,"  he  insisted.  "Please! 
Just  make  your  mind  easy  as  to  your  brother. 
The  matter  shall  not  go  any  farther.  I  don't 
know  what  I  can  do  for  him  as  yet — the  circum- 
stances make  it  difficult;  but  I  shall  find  some- 
thing." 

So,  blinded  with  tears,  Jennie  made  her  way 
toward  the  lift,  calling  down  on  Bob's  father  as 
well  as  on  his  mother  all  the  blessings  she  was 
able  to  invoke. 

Late  that  afternoon,  Teddy,  on  the  floor  of  his 
hut,  woke  with  a  start  from  a  doze.  He  hadn't 
meant  to  doze,  but  he  had  slept  little  on  the  pre- 
ceding night,  and  was  lulled,  moreover,  by  a  sense 
of  his  security.  The  day  had  not  been  as  ex- 
citing as  the  day  before.  Nothing  having  hap- 
pened during  all  those  hours,  he  was  growing 
convinced  that  nothing  would.  In  its  way, 
safety  was  becoming  irksome.  He  began  to 
ask  himself  whether  the  spirit  of  adventure 
didn't  summon  him  to  go  forth  as  a  tramp  that 
night. 

So  he  dozed — and  so  he  waked,  with  a  start. 
The  start  was  possibly  due  to  a  consciousness 
even  in  his  sleep  that  there  were  people  in  the 
road.  He  was  frightened  before  he  could  put  his 
eye  again  to  the  peephole.  Luckily  the  pistol 
was  at  hand,  and  the  other  thing  might  now  have 
to  be  done. 

277 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  seemed  likely.  Two  burly 
figures  had  already  left  the  highway,  Flynn 
tramping  along  the  flicker  of  path,  and  Jackman 
picking  his  steps  through  the  oozy  mud  a  little 
to  Flynn's  right  and  a  little  behind  him.  There 
was  no  secrecy  about  their  approach,  and  ap- 
parently no  fear. 

"They  don't  suspect  that  I've  got  a  gun," 
Teddy  commented  to  himself.  "Lobley  can't 
have  told  them." 

They  were  talking  to  each  other,  and,  though 
Teddy  could  not  make  out  their  words,  he  heard 
Flynn's  gurgle  of  a  laugh.  To  his  fevered 
imagination,  it  was  a  diabolic  laugh,  suggestive 
of  handcuffs  and  torture. 

The  thought  of  handcuffs  frenzied  him.  Of 
the  sacrilegious  touch  on  his  person,  the  links 
set  the  final  mark.  Rather  than  submit  to  them 
he  would  shoot  anyone,  preferably  himself.  For 
shooting  himself  the  minute  had  come,  and  he 
decided  to  do  it  through  the  temple.  The  aim 
through  the  heart  might  miscarry;  there  was  no 
chance  of  miscarriage  through  the  brain.  All 
that  remained  for  him  now  was  to  know  the 
moment  when. 

"Don't  shoot  till  you  see  the  whites  of  their 
eyes." 

Some  trick  of  memory  brought  the  tag  back 
to  him.  He  knew  that  it  applied  to  the  shooting 
of  an  enemy,  but  in  this  case  it  suited  himself. 
He  couldn't  see  the  whites  of  their  eyes  as  yet, 
for  through  the  grasses  and  over  the  slimy 

278 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ground  they  advanced  but  slowly.  That  gave  him 
the  longer  to  live.  He  might  live  for  three  min- 
utes, possibly  for  five.  Even  a  minute  was 
something. 

But  he  was  ready.  He  couldn't  say  that  he 
had  no  fear,  because  he  was  all  fear;  but  for  the 
very  reason  that  he  was  all  fear,  he  was  frozen, 
numb.  Only,  the  hand  that  held  the  pistol  shook. 
He  couldn't  control  it.  All  the  more,  then,  must 
he  do  it  through  the  brain,  since  he  found  by 
experiment  that  he  could  steady  the  muzzle 
against  his  temple.  He  didn't  dare  so  to  hold  it 
long,  lest  that  impulse  of  acting  before  he  thought 
might  deprive  him  of  these  last  precious  seconds 
of  life.  So  he  let  the  thing  rest  on  the  peephole, 
pointing  outward,  like  a  gun  on  board  ship. 
He  found,  too,  that  this  steadied  his  eye.  He 
could  squint  along  the  barrel  right  at  the  two 
big  figures  lumbering  through  the  morass. 

"Don't  shoot  till  you  see  the  whites  of  their 
eyes." 

Flynn  looked  up,  a  laugh  on  his  lips  at  this 
absurd  adventure.  The  boy  saw  the  whites  of 
his  eyes,  and,  as  far  as  he  himself  knew,  his  mind 
went  blank.  He  always  declared  that  he  heard 
no  sound.  He  only  saw  Flynn  throw  up  his 
arms  with  a  kind  of  stifled  shout — stagger — try 
to  regain  his  lost  balance — and  go  tumbling,  face 
downward,  into  the  long  grass.  Jackman  fell, 
too,  though  not  so  prone  but  that  he  could 
partially  raise  himself,  half  supported  by  his 
left  arm,  while,  without  being  able  to  face  toward 
19  279 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

the  road,  he  waved  his  right  to  the  motors  flashing 
by. 

For  Teddy  mind-action  ceased.  He  was 
nothing  but  mad  instinct.  He  knew  he  must 
have  fired — must  have  fired  twice — that  the 
hand  that  was  to  shoot  into  his  temple  had 
betrayed  him.  He  knew,  too,  that  he  couldn't 
shoot  into  his  temple — that  great  as  was  his 
terror  of  the  handcuffs,  his  terror  of  this  thing 
was  worse.  Flinging  the  pistol  across  the  floor, 
his  one  impulse  was  to  save  himself. 

As  he  had  foreseen,  his  mind,  once  it  began  to 
work,  worked  quickly.  He  saw  that  the  grass 
growing  up  to  the  door  of  the  shack  was  tall,  and 
hardly  beaten  down  by  his  footsteps.  Lying 
flat  like  a  lizard,  he  wriggled  his  way  into  it. 
The  very  yielding  of  the  swampy  bottom  beneath 
his  weight  was  in  his  favor.  By  a  sense,  such  as 
that  which  had  waked  him  up,  he  knew  that 
motors  were  stopping  in  the  road,  that  people 
were  leaping  out,  that  Flynn  and  Jackman  were 
the  objects  of  everyone's  concern,  and  that,  in 
the  mystery  as  to  what  had  happened  to  them, 
no  one's  attention  was  as  yet  directed  to  himself. 
He  made  for  the  back  of  the  shack,  writhing  his 
way  round  the  two  corners,  and  heading  out 
toward  the  center  of  the  marsh.  It  was  needful 
to  do  this,  since  the  shanty  and  its  neighborhood 
would  soon  be  explored,  and  he  must,  if  possible, 
be  lost  in  the  swampy  tracklessness. 

Though  progress  of  necessity  was  slow,  he 
was  amazed  at  the  distance  he  was  putting 

280 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

between  himself  and  danger.  Oh,  if  it  was  only 
night!  If  a  thundercloud  would  only  come  up 
and  darken  the  sky!  But  it  was  the  brilliant, 
pitiless  sunshine  of  an  August  afternoon,  with 
not  a  shred  of  atmosphere  to  help  him.  Still 
he  writhed  and  writhed  and  writhed  his  way 
onward,  making  the  pace  of  a  snake  when  half 
of  its  body  is  dead.  He  was  no  longer  Teddy 
Follett;  he  was  no  longer  so  much  as  an  animal. 
He  was  one  big  agony  of  mind,  which  becomes 
an  agony  of  body;  and  yet  he  was  eager  to  live. 

He  began  to  think  that  he  might  live.  He 
seemed  as  far  away  from  the  peril  behind  him 
as  the  woods  thing  that  gives  its  hunter  the  slip 
in  the  green  depths  of  the  covert.  Dogs  might 
be  able  to  track  him,  but  not  men  alone;  and 
while  they  were  bringing  up  the  bloodhounds 
he  might.  .  .  . 

And  then  he  heard  a  shout  that  struck  through 
him  like  paralysis. 

"There  he  is!     I  see  him!" 

"Where?     Where?" 

"That  line  behind  the  shack — don't  you  see? 
— a  little  streak  right  through  the  grass." 

"No;   I  don't  see  anything." 

"Come  along  and  I'll  show  you.  Come 
along,  boys.  We'll  get  him.  He's  only  going  on 
his  belly." 

"Yes,  and  be  croaked,  like  this  poor  guy! 
Don't  forget  that  the  bird  over  there  can  give 
you  a  dose  of  lead." 

So  Flynn  was  dead!  That  was  the  meaning 
281 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  that.  Teddy  had  killed  a  man.  Perhaps  he 
had  killed  two  men.  He  hadn't  taken  time  to 
think  of  it  before;  but  now  that  he  did,  he  lay 
stricken  in  every  muscle  of  his  frame,  his  face 
in  the  mud,  and  his  fingers  dug  into  the  queachy 
roots  of  the  sedges. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE  guests  went  early.  It  was  a  relief  to 
have  them  go.  Not  that  they  differed 
from  other  guests  to  whom  Collingham  Lodge 
was  accustomed  to  open  its  doors,  or  that  the 
dinner  was  less  fastidiously  good  than  Junia 
was  in  the  habit  of  giving.  Dinner  and  guests 
had  both  been  up  to  form;  and  yet  it  was  a 
relief  when  the  last  car  glided  from  beneath  the 
portico. 

"Why  do  you  suppose  it  is?" 
Junia  had  asked  this  question  so  often  of  late 
that  Collingham  had  ceased  to  try  to  answer 
it.  Instead,  he  lit  a  cigar  and  strolled  to  the 
open  French  window.  He,  too,  found  it  a  relief 
to  relax  in  the  company  of  his  family,  though 
less  puzzled  than  Junia  at  the  state  of  mind. 

"Oh,  come  out!"  Edith  called  from  the  ter- 
race. "It's  heavenly." 

It  was  a  soft,  warm,  velvety  night,  starlit  and 
voluptuous.  The  air  astir  was  just  enough  to 
carry  the  scents  of  roses,  honeysuckle,  mignon- 
ette, and  new-mown  hay.  Except  for  the 
dartings  of  small  living  things  and  the  occasional 
peep  of  a  half-awake  bird,  there  was  no  sound 
but  that  of  the  plash  of  the  fountains  on  the 

283 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

terraces.  Edith  went  in  for  a  light  wrap  for  her 
mother;  Collingham,  his  cigar  in  hand,  dropped 
into  the  teakwood  chair. 

"It  isn't  our  dinners  only,"  Junia  complained, 
when,  with  the  wrap  about  her  shoulders,  she 
had  settled  herself  in  the  wicker  armchair  she 
preferred;  "it's  all  dinners.  It's  just  as  if  people 
didn't  enjoy  them  any  more." 

"Well,  they  don't."  Edith  half  loungingly 
swung  herself  in  a  Gloucester  hammock.  "What 
we've  got  to  learn,  mother  dear,  is  that  enter- 
taining, as  we  called  it,  was  a  pre-war  habit 
which  we've  outlived  in  spirit,  though  we  haven't 
quite  come  to  the  point  in  fact." 

"There's  something  in  that,"  Collingham 
agreed. 

"And  yet  there's  got  to  be  hospitality,"  Junia 
reasoned.  "You  can't  just  live  and  die  to 
yourself." 

Edith  swung  lazily. 

"Hospitality,  yes;  but  isn't  there  a  difference 
between  that  and  entertaining?" 

"If  so,  what  is  it?" 

"I'm  not  sure  that  I  can  say.  Isn't  the  one 
a  permanent  necessity,  and  the  other  merely  a 
custom  that  can  go  out  of  date?" 

"Between  your  custom  that  can  go  out  of 
date  and  your  permanent  necessity,  I  don't  see 
that  there's  much  distinction." 

"Well,  there  is,  mother  dear.  It's  like  this: 
Entertaining  is  giving  people  something  they 
don't  particularly  want  and  which  you  expect 

284 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

them  to  repay;  while  hospitality  is  opening  your 
house  to  people  in  need,  whether  they  can  repay 
you  or  not." 

"Oh,  if  we're  going  to  open  our  houses  to  people 
in  need — " 

"Well,  what?" 

"I'm  sure  I  don't  know  what;  nor  you,  either." 

"And  that's  just  it.  We're  halting  between 
two  states  of  mind.  Ever  since  the  war  began, 
mere  entertaining  bores  us;  and  we're  terrified 
at  the  idea  of  genuine  hospitality;  so  there  we 
are.  We  still  give  dinners  and  go  to  them;  but 
when  we  do  we  feel  it's  something  fatuous,  which 
can't  help  making  us  dull." 

Out  of  the  silence  that  ensued  Collingham 
said,  moodily: 

"It's  all  very  fine  to  talk  of  opening  your 
house  to  people  in  need;  but  it's  not  as  easy  as 
it  looks." 

"Is  anything  ever  as  easy  as  it  looks,  dad? 
Don't  we  shirk  the  social  problems  that  are 
upsetting  the  world  by  declaring  them  impos- 
sible to  solve,  when  a  material  difficulty  only 
puts  us  on  our  mettle?" 

He  turned  this  over.  All  that  day  he  had  been 
calculating  his  own  possible  responsibility  in 
Teddy  Follett's  going  wrong,  and  was  thinking 
of  it  now.  In  the  end  he  said: 

"All  the  same  you've  got  to  follow  the  regular 
trend.  If  you  were  in  business  you'd  know. 
You  can't  do  things  differently  from  other  people. 
You  may  be  as  sorry  as  you  like  not  to  be  able 

285 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

to  help;  but  if  you  can't,  you  can't — and  there's 
an  end  of  it." 

"Mr.  Ayling  in  his  new  book,  Social  Problems 
and  the  Individual,  says  there's  a  distinction  to 
be  drawn  between  cant  and  cant — there's  the 
can't  that  comes  from  lack  of  ability,  and  the 
can't  that  springs  from  the  accepted  standard. 
He  says — " 

"I  don't  believe  your  father  is  at  all  interested 
in  that,  Edith  dear." 

"Oh  yes;  let  her  go  on.  I'm  not  afraid  of 
what  Ayling  thinks." 

But  before  Edith  could  resume  the  attention 
of  all  three  was  called  by  the  tinkle  of  the  tele- 
phone bell  in  the  library,  which  could  be  ap- 
proached from  the  terrace  through  the  drawing- 
room.  With  a  muttered,  "Who's  ringing  up 
at  this  time  of  night?"  Collingham  dragged 
himself  in  to  answer  it.  The  women  remained 
silent,  each  listening  to  see  if  the  call  was  for  her. 

"Yes?  .  .  .  This  is  Mr.  Collingham Who? 

...  Oh,  it's  you,  Mr.  Brunt?  .  .  .  Yes?  .  .  .  What 
did  you  say?  .  .  .  Killed?  Who's  killed?  .  .  . 
Not  Flynn  the  detective,  who  comes  in  and  out 
of  the  bank?  .  .  .  Indeed!  Dear  me!  Dear  me! 
Where  was  it  ?  ...  Who  did  it  ?  ...  Not  that  boy  ? 
.  .  .  Oh,  my  God!  .  .  .  What  happened?  .  .  .  Tell 
me  quickly.  . .  .  Over  beyond  Jersey  City!  Yes? 
Yes  ?  .  .  .  And  they've  got  him  ?  ...  In  the  Brig  ? 
That's  the  Ellenbrook  jail,  isn't  it?  ...  Jackman, 
too,  did  you  say?  .'.  .  Wounded,  but  not  killed. 
.  .  .  Badly?  .  .  .  Oh,  the  poor  fellow!  ...  In  the 

286 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

hospital?  .  .  .  That's  right.  .  .  .  Has  anyone  com- 
municated with  his  family? .  .  .  Good!  Good! .  . . 
And  Flynn's  wife?  .  .  .  Oh,  the  poor  woman!  .  .  . 
And  the  boy's  family?  .  .  .  You  don't  know  any- 
thing? Then  no  one  has  informed  his  mother? 
.  .  .  Not  that  you  know  of.  ...  I  see.  .  .  .  He's  to 
be  brought  into  court  to-morrow  morning.  .  .  . 
Poor  little  devil!  .  .  .  Oh,  I  know  he  doesn't  de- 
serve pity,  but — but  I  can't  help  it,  Brunt. 
His  father  was  with  us  so  long  and — and  one 
thing  and  another!  .  .  .  No;  I'll  appear  in  court 
myself  and  see  what  I  can  do  for  him.  .  .  .  Good 
night,  then.  I'll  see  you  in  the  morning." 

"What  boy  can  that  be?"  Junia  whispered, 
as  her  husband  hung  the  receiver  in  its  place. 

"I'm  sure  I  don't  know— unless — unless  it's 
the  Follett  boy." 

"Oh,  I  hope  not.  It  would  make  such  awful 
complications." 

They  waited  for  Collingham  to  come  and  tell 
them  his  plainly  thrilling  news,  but  he  remained 
in  the  library. 

"It  would  make  complications,"  Edith  ven- 
tured, in  a  low  voice,  "if  it  proved  to  be  young 
Follett — with  Bob  in  love  with  his  sister." 

Junia  spoke  not  so  much  from  impulse  as 
from  inspiration. 

"He's  more  than  in  love  with  her.  He's 
married  to  her." 

"Mother!" 

"Yes;  he  was  married  to  her  a  few  days 
before  he  sailed.  I've  known  it  all  along." 

287 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Edith  was  breathless. 

"Did  he  tell  you?" 

"No;  she  did." 

"She?    The  Follett  girl?    Why,  mother!" 

Junia  rose.  She  knew  that  if  her  suspicions 
were  correct  she  would  have  things  to  do  before 
she  slept. 

"Go  to  bed  now,  dear;  and  I'll  come  to  your 
room  and  give  you  the  whole  story.  In  the  mean- 
time I  may  have  to  tell  your  father." 

"You  mean  to  say  that  he  doesn't  know?" 

"No;  not  yet.  I've  been  rather  hoping  that 
before  I  told  him  Bob  would — would  see  his  way 
out  of  the  mess." 

"He'll  never  do  that,  never  in  this  world— 
not  according  to  what  he's  said  to  me." 

"Oh,  well,  he  didn't  know  everything  then 
that  he'll  have  to  know  now.  But  go  and  say 
good  night  to  your  father;  and  I'll  come  up  by 
the  time  you're  in  bed." 

"Mother,  you're  amazing!"  Edith  spoke 
more  in  awe  than  in  admiration;  but  she  obeyed 
orders  by  going  to  her  father. 

She  found  him  still  sitting  in  the  chair  by  the 
telephone,  bowed  forward,  his  elbows  on  his 
knees,  and  his  forehead  in  his  hands.  When 
he  lifted  his  haggard  eyes  toward  her  she  stood 
still. 

"Daddy,  what  in  the  world  has  happened? 
Who  is  it  that  has  killed  some  one  ?  We  couldn't 
help  hearing  that  much." 

He  raised  himself.     "Come  here." 
288 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Going  forward,  she  knelt  down  beside  him, 
taking  his  hand  and  kissing  it. 

"You  poor  daddy!  You're  bothered,  aren't 
you?" 

"It's — it's  young  Follett.  He's  been  stealing 
money  from  the  bank,  and  now  he's  shot  one  of 
the  detectives  who  heard  he  was  hiding  in  a 
cabin  out  on  the  New  Jersey  marshes.  They'd 
sent  out  a  description  of  him  to  the  suburban 
stations.  And  only  to-day  I  told  his  sister  that 
I'd  call  the  thing  off  and  give  him  another 
chance." 

"She  came  to  see  you?" 

"She  came  to  see  me." 

"Then  you  did  what  you  could,  didn't  you?" 

"I  did  what  I  could — then."  In  spite  of  the 
emphasis  on  the  final  word,  he  slapped  his  knee 
with  new  conviction.  "I've  done  what  I  could 
all  through.  It's  no  use  saying  I  haven't,  be- 
cause I  have.  There's  just  so  much  you  can  do, 
and  you  can't  do  any  more.  You  can't  make  a 
business  a  home  for  indigent  old  gentlemen — 
now,  can  you?" 

He  sprang  to  his  feet,  leaving  her  kneeling  by 
the  chair. 

"No,  I  don't  suppose  you  can,"  she  assented, 
rising  slowly.  "  But  I  do  wish  you'd  talk  to  Mr. 
Ayling  sometime,  daddy.  He  seems  to  see  all 
these  things  from  new  points  of  view- 
He  was  pacing  about  the  room  very  much  like 
Max  in  moments  of  agitation. 

"Oh,  new  points  of  view!  There's  only  one 
289 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

point  of  view,  I  tell  you,  and  that's  the  one  on 
what  we've  made  the  country  prosperous." 

She  smiled  wistfully. 

"Prosperous  for  some." 

"Well,  that's  better  than  prosperous  for 
nobody,  isn't  it?" 

She  said  good  night  to  him  then,  for  the  reason 
that  she  herself  was  so  stirred  that  she  needed 
seclusion  in  which  to  think  these  strange  things 
over.  That  Bob  should  have  married  Jennie 
Follett  was  a  shock  in  itself;  but  that  through 
his  wife  he  should  now  be  involved  in  this 
frightful  tragedy  was  something  that  her  mind 
found  it  hard  to  take  in.  It  was  the  first  time 
that  she  had  ever  come  so  close  to  the  more 
terrible  happenings  in  life. 

Meanwhile,  Junia,  overhearing  what  was  said, 
reconstructed  her  plan  of  campaign.  In  common 
with  great  generals,  she  possessed  the  faculty  of 
rapid  revision,  as  events  took  place  differently 
from  the  way  she  had  expected.  By  the  time 
she  heard  Edith  go  upstairs  she  had  foreseen 
the  line  of  action  which  the  new  situation  forced 
on  them. 

Collingham  was  still  lashing  about  the  library 
when  she  appeared  on  the  threshold.  Her  calm- 
ness arrested  him.  In  a  measure  it  soothed  him. 
It  was  the  kind  of  juncture  in  which  she  always 
knew  what  to  do,  and  he  had  confidence  in  her 
judgment.  When  she  said,  "Sit  down,  Bradley; 
I've  something  to  say,"  he  obeyed  her  quietly, 
relighting  his  cigar.  As  she,  too,  sat  down,  Max 

290 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

or  Dauphin  would  have  noted  in  her  the  aura  of 
authority  which  a  master  wears  when  about  to 
lecture  a  schoolboy. 

"I've  something  startling  to  tell  you,  Bradley; 
but  I  want  to  say  beforehand  that  you  mustn't 
get  worked  up,  because  I  see  a  way  out." 

Taking  his  cigar  from  his  lips,  he  looked  at 
her  sidewise.  His  expression  said,  "What's  it 
going  to  be  now?" 

"What  I've  heard  you  telling  Edith  about 
this  young  Follett  killing  a  detective  concerns 
us  more  closely  than  you  may  think,  because 
Bob  is  married  to  his  sister." 

He  laid  his  cigar  on  an  ash  tray,  swung  round 
to  the  table  between  them,  clasped  his  fingers, 
and  leaned  on  his  outstretched  elbows.  His 
tone  was  quiet,  even  casual. 

"When  did  he  do  that?" 

"Just  before  he  sailed." 

"Then  I'm  through  with  him." 

"Oh  no,  you're  not,  Bradley!  He's  your  son, 
whether  he's  married  anyone  or  not." 

"I  can't  help  his  being  my  son;  but  I  can  help 
having  anything  more  to  do  with  him." 

"Listen,  Bradley.  This  whole  thing  is  going 
to  be  in  the  papers  in  the  course  of  two  or  three 
days;  and  you  must  come  through  it  with  honors. 
It's  perfectly  simple  to  do  it,  and  win  everyone's 
respect  and  sympathy.  In  addition  to  that  you 
can  get  Bob's  devoted  affection;  and  you  know 
how  much  that  means  to  us  all." 

To  Collingham  it  meant  so  much  that  he 
291 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

listened  to  her  attentively,  with  eager  eyes.  In 
Bob's  marriage,  with  its  attendant  circum- 
stances, they  had  obviously  received  a  shock. 
All  Marillo  Park,  as  well  as  the  public  in  general, 
would  know  it  to  be  a  shock  and  would  be 
watching  to  see  how  they  took  it.  In  that  case, 
the  best  thing  was  the  sporting  thing.  They 
must  stand  right  up  to  the  facts  and  accept  them. 
Everyone  knew  that  the  younger  generation  was 
peculiar.  It  was  the  war,  Junia  supposed,  and 
yet  she  didn't  know.  In  any  case,  it  was  not  the 
Collinghams  alone  who  were  so  afflicted,  but 
dotted  all  over  Marillo  were  families  whose  young 
ones  were  acting  strangely.  There  were  the 
Rumseys,  whose  twin  sons  had  refused  an 
uncle's  legacy  amounting  to  something  like 
three  millions,  because  they  held  views  opposed 
to  the  owning  of  private  property.  There  were 
the  Addingtons,  whose  son  and  heir  had  married 
a  girl  twice  imprisoned  as  a  Red  and  was  be- 
lieved to  have  gone  Red  in  her  company.  There 
were  the  Bendlingers,  whose  daughter  had  eloped 
with  a  chauffeur,  divorced  him,  and  then  gone 
back  and  married  him  again.  These  were 
Marillo  incidents,  and  in  no  case  had  the  parents 
found  any  course  more  original  than  the  anti- 
quated one  of  discarding  and  disinheritance. 
And  yet  you  couldn't  wash  your  hands  of  your 
flesh  and  blood  like  that.  They  were  your  flesh 
and  blood  whatever  they  did;  and  it  was  idiotic 
to  act  as  if  you  could  cut  the  tie  between  yourself 
and  them.  He  could  see  for  himself  that  Rum- 

292 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

seys,  Addingtons,  and  Bendlingers  had  lost 
rather  than  gained  in  general  esteem  by  their 
melodramatic  poses. 

Now,  the  thing  for  the  Collinghams  was  to 
accept  the  situation  with  a  great  big  generous 
heart.  They  were  to  open  their  arms  to  Bob, 
and  back  him  loyally  in  the  combination  of  diffi- 
culties he  had  to  swing.  But  he  himself  must 
swing  them.  Junia  laid  emphasis  on  that.  By 
direct  action  they  couldn't  intervene.  They 
could  only  make  it  possible  for  him  to  act  di- 
rectly on  his  own  responsibility.  He  had  married 
a  wife  whose  family  was  in  trouble.  They,  the 
Collinghams,  would  not  share  that  trouble,  but 
they  would  help  him  to  share  it,  since  he  had 
brought  on  himself  the  necessity  for  doing  so. 

To  accomplish  this,  Junia  suggested  sending 
to  Bob  a  cablegram  covering  the  following  five 
points.  The  Follett  boy  was  in  jail  charged 
with  murdering  a  detective;  Bob  should  publish 
at  once  his  marriage  to  this  boy's  sister;  he 
should  return  to  New  York  by  the  first  con- 
venient steamer;  his  father  was  placing  ten 
thousand  dollars  to  his  account,  and  when  that 
was  used  would  place  more;  he  was  also  ready,  if 
instructed  by  Bob,  to  engage  the  best  counsel  in 
New  Jersey  to  defend  the  boy. 

"That  will  take  care  of  everything  till  he  gets 
here,"  Junia  concluded,  "and  in  the  meantime, 
we  can't  do  better,  it  seems  to  me,  than  go  up, 
as  we  always  do  at  this  time  of  year,  to  our  camp 
in  the  Adirondacks.  This  house  can  be  kept 

293 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

open  for  Bob  when  he  arrives,  and  Gull  can  stay 
with  one  of  the  motors  to  run  him  in  and  out  of 
town." 

"And  what  are  we  to  do  about  the  girl?" 

"Nothing.  That  isn't  for  us  to  take  up.  We 
must  leave  it  to  Bob.  If  he  ever  brings  her  to 
us  as  his  wife —  But,  then,  he  never  may." 

"What  makes  you  think  so?" 

Her  superb  eyes  covered  him  with  their  fine, 
audacious,  womanly  regard. 

"I'd  tell  you,  Bradley,  if— if  I  didn't  think 
there  are  things  that  had  better  not  go  into 
words,  even  between  you  and  me.  Whatever  Bob 
discovers  will  be  his  own  affair.  You  and  I  had 
best  know  as  little  as  possible.  We  can  back 
Bob  up,  and  that's  all  we  can  do.  Everything 
else  he  will  have  to  work  out  for  himself.  By 
the  time  he's  done  that  he'll  be  a  grown-up 
man.  It's  possible  he's  needed  something  of  the 
sort  to  develop  him." 

So  Collingham  telephoned  his  cablegram  to 
Bob,  and  went  to  bed  comforted.  Next  morning, 
on  arriving  at  the  bank,  he  found  Junia's  coun- 
sels supported  by  the  best  opinion  among  his 
co-workers.  That  is,  he  changed  his  mind  as  to 
going  to  the  court  in  Ellenbrook  for  the  first 
hearing  of  the  Follett  boy,  or  otherwise  expressing 
himself  toward  the  Follett  family.  He  had 
given  Bob  the  means  of  doing  whatever  needed 
to  be  done,  and  Bob  had  the  cable  at  his  dispo- 
sition. To  go  to  the  court,  or  to  express  sym- 
pathy in  any  way,  would,  according  to  Bickley, 

294 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

be  dangerous  to  discipline.  Feeling  in  the  bank 
was  extremely  hostile  to  young  Follett,  and  it 
was  better  that  it  should  remain  so.  The  bank 
employee's  cast  of  mind,  so  Bickley  said,  was 
not  revolutionary  or  rebellious  against  acknowl- 
edged rights.  By  sheer  force  of  habit,  it  was 
schooled  to  reverence  for  life  and  property.  The 
principle  of  ownership  being  holier  to  it  than  any 
tenet  of  religion,  the  Follett  boy  could  not  be 
looked  upon  otherwise  than  as  an  enemy  of  man- 
kind; and  this  was  as  it  should  be. 

While  Collingham  thus  weighed  the  counsels 
offered  him  at  the  bank,  Gussie  Follett  was 
blindly  making  her  way  homeward  from  Co- 
rinne's  with  a  paper  so  folded  in  her  hand  as  not 
to  display  its  headlines.  She  had  gone  to  her 
work  with  comparative  cheerfulness,  since,  on 
the  previous  day,  Jennie  had  been  assured  by 
no  less  authority  than  Mr.  Collingham  himself 
that  Teddy  should  not  be  sent  to  jail.  So  long 
as  he  was  not  sent  to  jail,  they  would  be  free 
from  public  comment,  and,  free  from  public  com- 
ment, they  could  "manage  somehow."  Managing 
somehow  being  an  art  in  which  they  had  gained 
authority,  they  were  not  afraid  of  that,  even 
though  it  involved  parting  with  the  one  great 
asset  against  calamity,  the  house. 

Gussie's   first   intimation   of  bad   news   came 

when,  on  entering  the  shop,  she  found  the  four 

or  five  other  girls  huddled  round  Corinne.     Her 

appearance  made  them   start   as  if  she  was   a 

20  295 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ghost.    Her  own  heart  sank  at  that,  though  she 
hailed  this  shudder  with  a  laugh. 

"Say,  girls,  is  this  the  big  reel  in  'The  Specter 
Bride'?" 

Corinne,  whose  real  name  was  Mamie  Callag- 
han,  emerged  from  a  miniature  forest  of  upright 
metal  rods  crowned  with  hats  at  various  roguish 
angles.  A  dark,  wavy-nosed  woman  of  cajoling 
Irish  witchery,  she  could  hardly  keep  the  prank 
from  her  voice  even  at  such  a  time  as  this. 

"So,  Gussie,  you  don't  know!  Well,  some 
one's  got  to  break  it  to  you,  and  I  guess  it  '11 
have  to  be  me." 

But  it  was  broken  already,  even  before  Corinne 
had  brought  forward  the  paper  she  was  hiding 
behind  her  back. 

"Teddy!"  Gussie  cried  out.  "There's  some- 
thing about  him  in  that  thing.  Let  me  see  it! 
Let  me  see  it!" 

Corinne  let  her  see  it,  and  the  work  was  done. 
Gussie  couldn't  read  beyond  the  headlines  with 
their  "Robbery"  and  "Murder"  in  Italic  cap- 
itals, but  she  grasped  enough.  The  snapshot  of 
Teddy  taken  in  the  road,  just  as  he  had  been 
dragged,  a  mass  of  slime,  out  of  the  morass,  made 
her  reel  backward  as  if  about  to  fall;  but  when 
Eily  O'Brien  sprang  to  her  support  she  waved 
her  away  gently.  She  was  not  going  to  faint. 
Her  physical  strength  wouldn't  leave  her,  what- 
ever else  was  gone. 

"I'm — I'm  going  home,"  was  all  she  said, 
crushing  the  paper  against  her  breast. 

296 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Oh,  Gus,  lemme  go  with  you!"  Eily  had 
begged;  but  this  kindness,  too,  Gussie  put  away 
from  her. 

She  could  go  alone,  and  alone  she  went,  with 
one  consuming  thought  as  she  sped  along. 

"Oh,  momma!  Poor  momma!  This  '11  about 
finish  her." 

And  yet  when  she  entered  the  living-room  her 
mother  was  sitting,  calm  and  serene,  while  Mr. 
Brunt  told  the  tale  of  the  New  Jersey  marshes. 
Jennie,  white,  tearless,  terrified,  crept  up  to 
Gussie,  and  the  two  clung  together  as  their 
mother  said,  in  her  steady  voice. 

"So  I  understand  that  only  one  of  them  is 
dead — the  Irish  one." 

Mr.  Brunt  assented. 

"Yes,  Flynn,  the  Irish  one." 

"I'm  not  surprised.  I  told  him  when  he  was 
here  the  other  day  that  what  he  called  'law  and 
order'  would  bring  him  to  grief,  as  they  bring 
most  of  us,  though  I  didn't  expect  it  to  be  so 
soon.  And  my  son,  you  say,  is  in  jail." 

"At  Ellenbrook." 

"They'll  try  him,  I  suppose." 

"I'm  afraid  so." 

"And  then  they'll  send  him  to  the  chair." 
Mr.  Brunt  didn't  answer.  "Oh,  you  needn't  be 
afraid  to  speak  of  it.  I  know  they  will.  I'm  not 
sorry.  Teddy  will  be  sorry,  of  course — till  it's 
over.  But  I'd  rather  he'd  suffer  a  little  now  and 
be  done  with  it  than  go  through  the  hell  of  years 
his  father  and  I  have  had.  If  there  was  going  to 

297 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

be  any  chance  for  him,  it  would  be  different; 
but  there's  no  chance,  not  the  way  the  world  is 
organized  now." 

The  girls  crept  forward  together. 

"Momma  darling — " 

But  Lizzie  resumed,  calmly : 

"Where  there's  nothing  but  government  by 
the  strong  for  the  strong,  people  like  ourselves 
must  go  under.  You'll  go  under,  too,  Mr.  Brunt. 
You  belong  to  the  doomed  class.  The  working- 
man  will  soon  be  getting  share  and  share  alike 
with  the  capitalist;  and  the  white-collar 
crowd  will  be  kicked  about  by  both.  If  we  had 
the  pluck  to  fight  as  the  workingman  has  fought, 
we  might  save  something  even  now;  but  we 
haven't,  and  so  there's  no  hope  for  us.  Law  and 
order  have  us  by  the  throat,  and  we  must  suffer 
till  they  strangle  us.  Well,  my  boy  will  soon  be 
out  of  it — thank  God ! — and  all  I  ask  is  to  follow 
him." 

When  Mr.  Brunt  got  himself  to  the  door, 
Jennie  went  with  him,  as  she  had  done  with 
Flynn  and  Jackman  two  days  earlier.  She  did 
this  in  the  dazed  condition  of  a  woman  who  per- 
forms some  little  act  of  courtesy  during  ship- 
wreck, while  waiting  for  the  vessel  to  go  down. 

"You  must  excuse  my  mother,  Mr.  Brunt. 
Ever  since  my  father  died  her  mind's  been 
unsettled,  and  we  don't  know  what  to  make  of 
her." 

But  Mr.  Brunt's  demeanor  did  not  encourage 
conversation.  To  do  him  justice,  the  mission  on 

298 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

which  Collingham  had  sent  him  had  been  re- 
pugnant for  other  reasons  than  the  breaking  of 
bad  news.  His  mind  being  of  the  cast  Bickley 
had  analyzed  that  morning,  Teddy's  theft  filled 
him  with  more  horror  than  his  killing  of  a  man. 
To  come  so  near  to  crime  against  the  ownership 
of  bank  notes  inspired  him  with  a  physical 
loathing  which  even  Jennie's  loveliness  couldn't 
mitigate.  It  was  as  if  she  herself  was  tainted  by 
some  horrible  infection,  making  it  a  relief  to 
him  to  get  away  from  her. 

But  turning  to  re-enter  the  house,  she  felt 
again  that  access  of  new  strength  which  had 
come  to  her  repeatedly  during  the  past  few  days. 
It  was  as  if  resources  of  her  being  never  taxed 
before  were  now  offering  themselves  for  use. 
What  she  had  to  do  was  in  the  forefront  of  her 
thought  rather  than  what  some  one  else  had 
done.  What  some  one  else  had  done  was  already 
in  the  past.  That  was  made  for  her  and  couldn't 
be  helped;  whereas  her  own  duties  imperatively 
summoned  her  to  look  ahead. 

"Teddy  will  need  a  suitcase  of  clean  things," 
was  the  direct  expression  of  these  thoughts 
before  she  had  recrossed  the  threshold. 

Having  said  this  aloud  to  Gussie,  Gussie's 
mind  could  also  tackle  the  minor  concrete  details 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  bigger  considerations  in- 
volved in  Teddy's  plight.  That  the  honest, 
loving,  skylarking  boy  whom  they  had  grown  up 
with  could  be  a  thief  and  a  murderer  was  some- 
thing the  intelligence  rejected  as  it  rejected 

299 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

dreams.  They  could,  therefore,  take  the  new 
straw  suitcase  which  had  once  been  a  family 
present  to  Gussie,  and  which  she  had  never  used, 
pack  it  with  Teddy's  other  suit  and  the  necessary 
linen,  as  if  he  were  really  at  Paterson  or  Phila- 
delphia. 

"How  shall  we  get  it  to  him?"  Gussie  asked, 
when  the  work  was  done. 

"I'll  take  it,"  Jennie  answered,  "if  you'll 
stay  and  look  after  momma." 

"Momma  won't  need  much  looking  after — 
the  way  she  is." 

"Well,  that's  one  comfort  anyhow.  With 
this  to  go  through  with  I'm  glad  her  mind's  not 
what  it  used  to  be." 

So,  stunned  and  dry  eyed,  they  caught  on  to 
the  new  conditions  by  doing  little  perfunctory 
things,  consoling  and  helping  each  other. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

TEDDY'S  first  night  in  a  cell  was  more  toler- 
able than  it  might  have  been  for  the  reason 
that  his  faculties  seemed  to  have  stopped  work- 
ing. As  nearly  as  possible  he  had  become  an 
inanimate  thing,  to  be  struck,  pulled,  hustled, 
and  chucked  wherever  they  chose.  Not  only 
had  he  no  volition,  but  little  or  no  sensation.  A 
dead  body  or  a  sack  of  flour  could  hardly  have 
been  more  lost  to  a  sense  of  rebellion  or  indignity. 

It  was  not  that  he  didn't  suffer,  but  that 
suffering  had  reached  the  extreme  beyond  which 
it  makes  no  further  impression.  Nothing  regis- 
tered any  more — no  horror,  no  brutalities,  no 
curses  or  kicks.  As  far  as  he  could  take  account 
of  himself,  the  Teddy  Follett  even  of  the  shack 
had  been  left  behind  in  some  vanished  world, 
while  the  thing  that  had  hands  and  feet  was  a 
clod  unable  to  resent  the  oaths  and  blows  and 
flingings  to  and  fro  which  were  all  it  deserved. 

Once  he  had  heard  that  shout,  "I  see  him!" 
in  the  road,  he  had  been  like  an  insect  paralyzed 
by  terror  that  doesn't  dare  to  move.  He  had 
lain  there  till  they  came  and  got  him.  It  was 
not  fear  alone  that  pinned  him  to  the  spot;  his 
bodily  strength  had  given  out.  For  forty-eight 
hours  he  had  eaten  but  little  and  drunk  only 

301 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

the  two  glasses  of  water  in  the  pastry  shop. 
Though  he  had  slept  the  first  night,  the  second 
had  been  passed  in  a  fevered,  intermittent  doze. 
Furthermore,  the  agony  of  approaching  suicide 
had  drained  his  natural  forces. 

So  he  lay  still  while  the  hue  and  cry  of  the 
man  hunters  quickened  and  waxed  behind  him. 
Escape  was  out  of  the  question,  since,  even  if 
he  had  the  strength  to  drag  himself  a  few  yards 
farther,  they  would  run  him  down  in  the  end. 
Resistance,  too,  would  be  hopeless,  with,  as  he 
judged,  some  twenty  or  thirty  in  the  posse. 

He  could  feel  their  fury  growing  as  they  slipped 
and  slithered  through  the  grasses.  Oaths,  ob- 
scenities, and  laughter  accompanied  every  gro- 
tesque accident,  as  one  man  fell  with  the  weedy 
tangle  about  his  feet,  or  another  went  knee-deep 
into  the  swamp.  The  very  fear  of  "a  dose  of 
lead''  intensified  their  excitement  till,  as  they 
caught  sight  of  him,  a  helpless  thing  with  face 
hidden  in  the  mud,  they  gave  vent  to  a  yell  of 
satisfaction. 

They  didn't  let  him  rise;  they  didn't  so  much 
as  pull  him  to  his  feet.  They  dragged  him  by 
his  collar,  by  his  hair,  by  his  arms,  by  his  legs, 
by  anything  they  could  seize,  kicking,  beating, 
and  cursing  him.  He  made  no  outcry;  he  didn't 
speak  a  word.  For  aught  they  knew,  he  might 
be  drunk  or  insane  or  dead.  Only  once,  when  a 
man  kicked  him  in  the  face,  was  he  powerless  to 
suppress  a  groan.  Otherwise,  he  was  just  a 
sodden  lump  of  flesh  as,  now  head  first,  now  feet 

302 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

first,  now  with  face  upward,  now  with  face  down- 
ward, he  was  tugged  and  tumbled  and  hurtled 
and  rolled  over  the  five  hundred  yards  of  slime 
between  the  spot  where  they  had  caught  him  and 
the  road. 

There  he  had  a  new  experience.  He  learned 
what  it  was  not  only  to  be  outside  the  human 
race,  but  to  be  held  as  its  foe.  Already,  while 
still  far  out  on  the  marsh,  he  had  heard  the  yells: 
"Kill  him!  Kill  him!  Kick  the  damn  skunk  to 
death!"  But  when  actually  surrounded  by 
these  howling,  screaming,  outraged  citizens, 
with  their  teams  and  motor  cars  banked  in  the 
roadway,  he  tasted  the  peculiar  astonishment  of 
the  man  who  has  always  been  liked  when  assailed 
by  a  storm  of  hatred.  While  the  three  or  four 
police  who  by  this  time  had  appeared  did  their 
best  to  defend  him,  men  fought  with  one  another 
to  get  at  him.  A  well-dressed  girl  of  not  more 
than  eighteen  reached  over  the  shoulder  of  one 
of  the  police  and  struck  him  on  the  head  with 
her  sunshade.  An  elderly  woman  squeezed  her- 
self near  him  and  spat  in  his  face. 

"Ah,  say,  people,"  one  of  the  police  called 
out,  "give  the  young  guy  a  chanst.  Can't  you 
see  he's  only  a  kid?" 

"Kid'  be  damned!"  came  the  response. 
"Say,  fellows,  here's  the  telegraph  pole!  Let's 
lynch  him!" 

"Lynch  him!    Lynch  him!    String  him  up!" 

"No!  Let's  make  a  bonfire  and  burn  him 
alive!" 

303 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Chuck  the  cops  into  the  Hackensack,  and 
then  we  can  do  as  we  like/' 

"Lynch  him!    Lynch  him!     Lynch  him!" 

Teddy  didn't  care  whether  they  lynched  him 
or  not.  In  as  far  as  he  could  form  a  wish  he 
wished  they  would;  but  then  he  was  past  forming 
wishes.  They  could  string  him  up  to  the  tele- 
graph pole  or  burn  him  alive  just  as  they  felt 
inclined;  for  he  had  traveled  beyond  fear. 

Just  then  the  crowd  parted,  the  police  van 
drove  up,  and  his  protectors  dragged  him  to  its 
shelter.  Even  then  there  was  a  new  sensation 
in  store  for  him.  The  parting  of  the  crowd 
showed  Flynn  lying  by  the  roadside,  also  waiting 
for  the  van.  He  was  on  his  back,  his  knees 
drawn  up,  his  mouth  dropped  open.  Waistcoat 
and  shirt  had  been  torn  apart,  and  Teddy  saw 
a  red  spot. 

He  started  back.  Except  for  the  groan  when 
he  had  been  kicked  in  the  face,  it  was  the  only 
time  he  opened  his  lips. 

"I  didn't  do  that!"  he  cried,  so  loud  that  a 
jeer  broke  from  the  crowd. 

A  policeman  shook  him  by  the  arm. 

"Say,  sonny,  you  didn't  do  that?" 

Appalled  by  the  sight  of  the  dead  man, 
Teddy  could  do  no  more  than  stupidly  shake 
his  head. 

"Then  who  in  hell  did?    Tell  us  that." 

But  the  boy  collapsed,  his  head  sagging,  his 
knees  giving  way  under  him.  When  he  returned 
to  consciousness  he  was  lying  in  the  dark,  jolt- 

304 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ing,  jolting,  jolting,  on  the  floor  of  the  police 
van. 

At  the  station  he  was  pulled  out  again.  He 
could  stand  now,  and  walk,  though  not  very 
well.  Hands  si:  oorted  him  as  he  stumbled  up 
the  steps  and  iniu  a  room  where  a  man  in  uni- 
form sat  behind  a  desk,  while  three  or  four  police 
and  half  a  dozen  unexplained  hangers-on  stood 
about  idly. 

"A  live  one,"  the  policeman  who  led  Teddy 
called  out,  jocosely,  as  they  approached  the 
desk. 

"Looks  like  a  dead  one,"  the  man  behind  the 
desk  replied,  with  the  same  sense  of  humor. 
"Looks  like  he'd  been  dead  and  buried  and  dug 
up  again." 

The  allusion  to  Teddy's  hatless,  mud-caked 
appearance  raised  a  laugh. 

The  man  behind  the  desk  dipped  his  pen  in 
the  ink  bottle  and  drew  up  a  big  ledger. 

"Name?" 

Teddy  could  just  articulate.  "Edward  Scar- 
borough Follett." 

"Gee,  whiz!  Guess  you'll  have  to  spell  it 
out." 

Teddy  spelled  slowly,  as  if  the  letters  were 
new  to  him.  Having  done  this,  he  was  asked  no 
more  questions.  Explanations  came  from  the 
officer  who  had  "run  him  in"  and  who  produced 
the  automatic  pistol  picked  up  on  the  floor  of 
the  shack.  When  it  was  stated  in  addition  that 
Teddy  was  charged  with  shooting  and  killing 

305 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Peter  Flynn,  whom  all  of  them  knew  and  to 
whom  they  were  bound  by  ties  of  professional 
solidarity,  the  boy  felt  the  half-friendly  in- 
difference with  which  the  spectators  had  seen 
him  come  in  change  to  sullen  hostility. 

The  formulas  fulfilled,  he  was  seized  more 
roughly  than  before,  to  be  half  led,  half  pushed, 
along  a  dim  hall  and  down  a  dimmer  flight  of 
steps  to  a  worn,  stone-flagged  basement  pervaded 
by  dankness  and  a  smell  of  disinfectants.  The 
corridor  into  which  they  turned  was  long  and 
straight  and  narrow  like  a  knife-cut  through  a 
cheese.  On  the  left  a  blank  stone  wall  was  the 
blanker  for  its  whitewash;  on  the  right,  a  row 
of  little  doors  diminished  down  the  vista  to  the 
size  of  pigeonholes.  Pressed  close  to  the  square 
foot  of  grating  inset  in  each  door  was  a  human 
face  eager  to  see  who  was  coming  next,  while  the 
officer  was  greeted  with  howls  of  rage  or  whining 
petitions  or  strings  of  ugly  words. 

They  stopped  at  the  first  open  door,  and  after 
one  glance  within  Teddy  started  back. 

"Don't  put  me  in  there,  for  Jesus'  sake!" 

The  cry  was  involuntary,  since  he  knew  he 
would  be  put  in  there  in  any  case. 

"Ah,  go  in  wid  you ! " 

A  shove  sent  him  over  the  threshold  with  such 
force  that  he  fell  on  the  wooden  bunk  which  was 
all  the  dog  hole  contained,  while  the  door 
clanged  behind  him. 

All  that  night  he  lay  in  a  stupor  induced  by 
misery.  No  one  came  near  him;  no  food  or 

306 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

drink  was  offered  him.  Thirst  made  him  slightly 
delirious,  which  was  a  relief.  Now  and  then, 
when  his  real  consciousness  partially  returned 
he  muttered,  half  aloud: 

"I  didn't  do  it.  My  hand  might  have  done  it 
—but  that  wasn't  me." 

The  crepuscular  light  of  morning  was  not  very 
different  from  the  darkness  of  night,  but  it 
brought  his  senses  back  to  him  sluggishly. 
Bruised  as  he  was  in  body,  he  was  still  more 
bruised  in  mind,  and  could  render  to  himself  no 
more  than  a  vague  account  of  what  had  hap- 
pened yesterday.  When  a  tin  of  water  and  a 
hunk  of  bread  were  mysteriously  pushed  into  the 
cell,  he  consumed  them  like  an  animal,  lying 
down  again  on  the  bunk.  Without  water  for  a 
wash,  his  face  and  hair  were  still  caked  with  the 
mud  which  also  stiffened  his  clothing. 

"My  Gad!  what's  that?" 

Not  having  seen  him  before,  the  guard  who 
summoned  him  to  court  was  startled  by  the  ap- 
parition that  crawled  to  the  threshold  of  the  cell 
when  the  door  was  unlocked.  The  semblance  to 
a  boy  was  little  more  exact  than  that  of  a  snow 
man  to  a  man. 

"Ah!  my  God!  my  God!  Sure  you  can't  go 
into  court  like  that.  They  wouldn't  know  you 
was  a  human  bein',  let  alone  a  prisoner.  Wait  a 
bit,  and  I'll  get  you  somethin'  to  wash  up  in." 

There  followed  a  little  rough  kindliness, 
scouring  and  brushing  and  combing  the  lad  into 
something  less  like  a  monstrosity.  Teddy  sub- 

307 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

mitted  as  a  child  does  and  with  a  child's  indiffer- 
ence to  cleanliness. 

So,  too,  he  submitted  in  court,  hardly  knowing 
where  he  was  or  the  significance  of  these  formal- 
ities. Apart  from  the  relief  he  got  from  his  own 
reiterations,  "I  didn't  do  it,  I  didn't  do  it,"  the 
proceedings  were  a  blur  to  him.  When  he  was 
led  out  again  down  more  steps,  along  more  cor- 
ridors, and  cast  into  another  stale  and  disinfected 
cell,  he  took  it  with  the  same  brutish  insensi- 
bility. He  didn't  know  that  the  new  cell  was  in 
that  part  of  the  House  of  Detention  known  as 
Murderers'  Row,  nor  did  he  heed  the  hoarse 
questions  whispered  through  the  next-door  grat- 
ing, and  which  he  could  barely  catch  as  they 
stole  along  the  wall. 

"Say,  who'd  ye  do  in?  Did  he  croak  right  off? 
My  guy  didn't  croak  till  three  weeks  after  I 
give  him  the  lead,  and  now  they  can't  send  me 
to  the  chair  nohow.  In  luck,  ain't  I?" 

To  Teddy,  this  uncanny  recitation  was  no 
more  than  the  other  sounds  which  smote  the 
auditory  nerve  but  hardly  penetrated  to  the 
brain.  They  were  all  abnormal  sounds,  sprung 
of  abnormal  conditions,  breaking  in  on  a  silence 
which  was  otherwise  that  of  the  sepulcher. 
Footsteps  clanked — and  then  all  was  still;  a 
door  banged — and  then  all  was  still;  a  raucous 
voice  shouted  out  a  curse — and  then  all  was 'still. 
The  stillness  was  as  ghostly  as  the  sound,  only 
that,  as  far  as  Teddy  was  concerned,  so  little 
reached  his  massacred  perceptions. 

308 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

The  rattle  of  keys  and  the  clanging  of  the 
door!  He  looked  up  from  the  bunk  on  the  edge 
of  which  he  was  sitting  listlessly. 

"Lady  to  see  you!" 

This  guard  was  young,  smart,  debonair,  with 
a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  and  the  first  who  didn't 
treat  a  comrade's  murderer  with  instinctive  ani- 
mosity. Teddy  got  up  and  followed  him  in  the 
stupefied  bewilderment  with  which  he  had  done 
everything  else  that  day.  Lady  to  see  him! 
The  words  seemed  to  refer  to  something  so  far 
back  in  his  history  that  he  could  hardly  recall 
what  it  was.  Once  upon  a  time  there  had  been 
a  mother,  a  Jennie,  a  Gussie,  and  a  Gladys; 
but  they  were  now  remote  and  shadowy. 

Along  corridors,  up  steps,  and  then  along  more 
corridors  he  tramped,  till  they  stopped  at  an 
open  door — and  there  he  saw  Jennie.  In  a  room 
unspeakably  bare  and  forbidding  in  spite  of  a 
table  and  half  a  dozen  chairs  she  waited  for  him 
with  a  smile.  He,  too,  did  his  best  to  smile,  but 
his  lower  lip,  swollen  with  the  kick  that  had 
caught  him  in  the  mouth,  made  the  effort  nothing 
but  a  rictus. 

For  this,  Jennie  had  been  prepared  by  the  snap- 
shot in  the  paper.  All  the  while  she  had  been  on 
the  way  to  him  she  had  been  saying  to.  herself 
that  she  must  show  no  sign  of  horror  or  surprise. 
Even  though  she  would  follow  the  cue  of  her  poor 
demented  mother  and  pretend  that  he  was  in 
prison  as  a  martyr,  she  would  take  no  pitying  or 
tragic  note.  She  went  forward,  therefore,  and 

309 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

threw  her  arms  about  him  with  the  same  offhand, 
unsentimental  pleasure  which  she  would  have 
shown  in  meeting  him  after  a  brief  absence 
at  any  time. 

"You  darling  Ted!  We're  so  glad  to  have 
found  you.  I  thought  I'd  just  run  down  and 
bring  you  some  clean  clothes." 

It  was  better  done  than  she  thought  she  had 
the  strength  for,  perhaps  because  his  need  was 
greater  than  she  had  supposed  possible.  Could 
she  have  dreamt  beforehand  that  Teddy  would 
ever  look  like  this,  she  would  have  screamed 
from  fright.  But  now  that  he  did,  she  rose  to 
the  fact,  seemingly  taking  it  for  granted,  actually 
taking  it  for  granted,  through  some  hitherto 
unsuspected  histrionic  force.  Within  a  minute 
of  his  arrival  they  were  seated  near  each  other, 
in  a  curious  make-believe  that  the  conditions 
were  not  terrible. 

With  this  familiar  presence  beside  him,  Teddy's 
mind  resumed  functioning,  possibly  to  his 
regret.  Home  was  close  to  him  again,  while  the 
loved  faces  came  back  to  life. 

"How's  ma?" 

The  question  was  indistinct  because,  now  that 
it  came  to  making  conversation,  he  found  that 
his  tongue  was  thickened  in  addition  to  his 
swollen  lip.  Jennie  replied  that  their  mother's 
health  was  never  better. 

"I  suppose" — he  balked  a  little  but  forced 
himself  onward — "I  suppose  she  feels  pretty 
bad — over  me." 

310 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"No,  she  doesn't.  She  told  me  to  tell  you  so." 
She  was  determined  to  speak  truthfully  in  this 
respect,  so  that  if  their  mother's  dementia  could 
do  him  any  good,  he  shouldn't  fail  of  it.  "She 
told  me  to  say  that  you  were  not  to  be  sorry  for 
anything  you'd  done,  no  matter  how  they 
punished  you." 

"Does  she — does  she  know  what  I've  done?" 

She  threw  it  off,  as  if  casually. 

"She  knows  all  that's  been  in  the  papers;  and 
I  don't  believe  they've  left  anything  out,  not 
judging  by  the  things  they've  said." 

"How's  Gussie?    How's  Gladys?" 

Having  answered  these  questions  to  the  best 
of  her  ability,  Jennie  raised  the  subject  of  what 
she  could  bring  him  to  eat.  The  guard  who  had 
remained  in  the  room  informed  her  that  she 
could  bring  him  anything,  at  which  she  promised 
to  return  next  day.  For  the  minute  she  was  at 
the  end  of  her  forces.  If  she  went  on  much 
longer  they  would  snap. 

"I'll  run  away  now,  Ted,"  she  said,  rising. 
"It's  splendid  to  see  you  so  bucked  up.  I'll  be 
here  again  about  this  time  to-morrow,  and  bring 
you  something  nice.  Momma's  busy  already 
making  you  a  fruit  cake."  She  added,  as  she 
held  him  by  the  hand,  "I  suppose  you'll  have  to 
have  a  lawyer." 

A  memory  came  to  him  like  that  of  something 
heard  while  under  an  anaesthetic. 

"I  think  the  judge  said  this  morning  that  he'd 
appoint  some  one  to — to  defend  me." 
21  3" 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Oh,  we'll  do  better  than  that,"  she  smiled, 
cheerily.  "I've  got  some  money.  We'll  have  a 
lawyer  of  our  own." 

The  journey  home  was  the  hardest  thing 
Jennie  had  ever  had  to  face.  Teddy!  Teddy! 
Teddy  brought  to  this!  It  was  all  she  could 
say  to  herself.  The  bare  fact  dwarfed  all  its 
causes,  immediate  or  remote. 

Eager  for  privacy  in  which  to  sob,  she  was 
speeding  along  Indiana  Avenue  when,  happening 
to  glance  in  the  direction  of  her  home,  she  saw 
Gladys  standing  on  the  sidewalk.  Gladys,  hav- 
ing at  the  same  minute  perceived  her,  started 
with  a  violent  bound  in  her  direction.  She,  too, 
had  a  newspaper  in  her  hand,  leading  Jennie  to 
expect  a  repetition  of  Gussie's  episode  that 
morning. 

It  was  such  a  repetition,  and  it  was  not.  It 
was,  to  the  extent  that  Gladys  had  been  informed 
of  Teddy's  drama  much  as  her  elder  sister  at 
Corinne's,  though  later  in  the  day.  At  a  minute 
when  trade  was  slack  and  Gladys  ruminantly 
chewing  gum,  Miss  Hattie  Belweather,  a  cash 
girl  in  the  gloves,  slipped  up  to  her  to  say: 

"Oh,  Gladys  Follett,  if  you  knew  what  Sun- 
shine Bright's  been  saying  about  you,  youd 
never  speak  to  her  again!"  Hattie  Belweather, 
who  had  the  blank,  innocent  expression  of  a 
sheep,  having  paused  for  the  natural  inquiry, 
went  on  breathlessly.  "She  says  your  brother 
Teddy  robbed  a  bank  and  killed  a  man  and  is  in 
jail  over  at  Ellenbrook  and — 

312 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Such  foolish  calumny  Gladys  could  so  far 
contemn  as  to  say  with  quiet  force: 

"You  tell  Sunshine  Bright  that  the  next  time 
I  go  by  the  notions  I'll  stop  and  break  her  neck. 
See?" 

Hattie  Belweather,  having  sped  away  to  carry 
this  challenge,  Gladys  found  herself  confronted 
by  Miss  Flossie  Grimm,  a  saleslady  in  the  stock- 
ings, to  which  department  Gladys  herself  in  a 
minor  capacity  was  also  attached.  Feeling  that 
the  Follett  child  was  ignorant  of  facts  of  which 
she  should  be  in  possession,  Miss  Grimm  said, 
reprovingly: 

"You've  got  a  chunk  of  gall!    Look  at  that!" 

That  was  one  of  the  papers  giving  the  story  of 
Teddy's  downfall,  so  that  Gladys,  too,  was 
soon  making  her  way  homeward.  But  she  was 
not  a  cash  girl  for  nothing,  while  the  instincts  of 
the  city  gamine  endowed  her  with  alertness  of 
mind  beyond  either  of  her  sisters.  She  remem- 
bered that  the  paper  she  had  seen  was  a  morning 
one,  and  that  by  this  hour  those  of  the  afternoon 
would  be  on  the  news  stands.  They  would  not 
only  give  further  details,  but  might  possibly 
tell  her  that  the  whole  story  was  untrue.  Some- 
where she  had  heard  that  among  the  New  York 
evening  papers  one  was  renowned  for  solemnity 
and  exactitude.  Veracity  costing  a  cent  more 
than  she  usually  spent  for  the  evening  news, 
when  she  spent  anything,  which  was  rare,  she 
felt  the  occasion  worth  the  extravagance. 

In  these  pages,  Teddy's  case  was  condensed 
313 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

into  so  small  a  paragraph  that  she  had  difficulty 
in  finding  it;  but  during  the  search  she  lighted 
on  something  else.  It  was  something  so  extraor- 
dinary, so  unbelievable,  so  impossible  to  assim- 
ilate, as  to  thrust  even  Teddy's  situation  well 
into  the  second  place. 

After  that,  all  the  known  methods  of  locomo- 
tion were  slow  to  Gladys  in  her  efforts  to  reach 
home;  but  before  she  could  enter  the  house  she 
had  seen  Jennie  advancing  up  the  avenue,  and 
so  ran  back  to  meet  her. 

"Oh,  Jen!    Look!" 

It  was  all  she  had  breath  to  say,  so  that  Jennie 
naturally  did  as  she  was  bidden.  But  she,  too, 
found  the  paragraph  thrust  beneath  her  eyes 
extraordinary,  unbelievable,  and  impossible  to 
assimilate,  though  for  other  reasons  than  those 
that  swayed  her  sister. 

COLLINGHAM — FoLLETT.  On  May  nth,  at  St.  Titus's 
Rectory,  Madison  Avenue,  by  the  Rev.  Larned  Goodbody, 
Robert  Bradley  Collingham,  Jr.,  of  Marillo  Park,  N.  Y., 
to  Jane  Scarborough  Follett,  of  Pemberton  Heights,  N.  J. 

Of  the  many  things  Jennie  didn't  comprehend, 
she  comprehended  this  paragraph  least  of  all. 
Who  had  put  it  in  the  paper,  and  what  did  it 
mean  ?  She  walked  on  dreamily,  Gladys  trotting 
beside  her,  a  living  interrogation  point. 

"Oh,  Jen,  what's  it  all  about?  Are  you 
married  to  him  really?" 

Jennie  answered  as  best  she  knew  how. 

"Not — not  exactly." 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

But  here  Gladys  was  too  quick  for  her. 

"If  you're  married  to  him  at  all,  it's  got  to  be 
exactly,  hasn't  it?" 

"I — I  did  go  through — through  the  ceremony." 

"Well  then,  you've  got  the  law  on  him," 
Gladys  declared,  earnestly.  "He'll  have  to  pay 
you  alimony  anyhow." 

"I — I  don't  want  him  to  pay  me  anything." 

"Not  pay  you  anything,  and  him  with  a  wad 
as  big  as  a  haystack?  Oh,  Jen,  you're  not  going 
dippy  like  poor  momma,  are  you?" 

Jennie  wondered  if  she  was.  It  seemed  to  her 
as  if  she  could  stand  little  more  in  the  line  of 
revolution  without  her  mind  giving  way. 

And  yet  within  a  few  minutes  she  received 
another  shock.  It  came  through  Gussie,  who 
ran  to  meet  them  at  the  door. 

"  For  mercy's  sake,  Jen,  what's  all  this  about  ?" 

She  fluttered  a  yellow  envelope,  on  which  the 
address  was  typewritten. 

MRS.  BRADLEY  COLLINGHAM,  JR. 
Care  MRS.  FOLLETT— ' 
ii  INDIANA  AVENUE 

PEMBERTON  HEIGHTS,  N.  J. 

"I  told  the  boy  it  didn't  belong  here—  "  Gussie 
was  beginning  to  explain  when  Gladys  inter- 
rupted. 

"Yes,  it  does.     Read  that." 

Gussie  read  and  read  again. 

"Well,  of  all —  She  stopped  only  because 
she  lacked  the  words  with  which  to  continue. 

315 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

In  the  meanwhile  Jennie  had  opened  her  tele- 
gram and  read: 

Have  asked  father  to  engage  best  counsel  in  New  York 
to  defend  boy.  Sailing  to-morrow  on  Venezuela,  and  will 
take  all  responsibilities  off  your  hands.  Placed  two  thou- 
sand dollars  to  your  account  at  Pemberton  National  Bank. 
See  manager.  Devoted  love.  Your  husband,  BOB. 

Jennie  let  the  yellow  slip  flutter  to  the  entry 
floor  while  she  stood  gazing  into  the  air.  Gussie 
having  picked  it  up,  the  two  3^ounger  sisters 
read  it  together. 

"Some  class!"  Gladys  commented,  dryly. 

But  Gussie  could  only  stare  at  Jennie  awe- 
somely, as  if  a  miracle  had  transformed  her. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

ON  landing  from  the  Venezuela,  Bob  drove 
out  to  Collingham  Lodge.  He  knew  that 
by  this  time  the  family  were  in  the  Adirondacks, 
and  that  with  Gull  and  his  wife  to  look  after  him 
he  should  have  the  place  to  himself.  Now  that 
he  was  known  to  be  married  he  had  first  thought 
it  possible  to  bring  Jennie  there,  but  had  decided 
that  the  big  empty  house  might  frighten  her  with 
its  loneliness.  A  hotel  in  New  York  was  what 
she  would  probably  prefer;  and  with  all  he  had 
to  do  for  Teddy,  it  would  doubtless  be  most  con- 
venient for  himself.  He  went  to  his  old  home, 
therefore,  only  as  to  a  base  from  which  to  make 
further  arrangements.  Having  unpacked  a  few 
things  and  eaten  a  snack  of  lunch,  he  would  go 
to  see  his  wife  at  once. 

Though  he  had  not  expected  to  hear  from  her 
on  landing,  and  still  less  to  see  her  at  the  dock, 
he  was  faintly  disappointed  to  receive  neither  of 
these  forms  of  greeting.  He  reminded  himself 
that  not  her  coldness,  but  her  inexperience,  would 
account  for  this,  and  so  made  the  more  of  his 
anticipations  for  the  afternoon.  She  had  written 
to  him  while  he  was  away,  short,  noncommittal 
letters,  betraying  a  mind  unused  to  corre- 
spondence rather  than  a  heart  opposed  to  it. 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Lack  of  habit,  he  told  himself,  would  for  a  long 
time  to  come  make  her  seem  unresponsive  when 
she  would  only  be  hesitating  and  observant. 

It  was  the  hot  season  at  Marillo,  and  those 
houses  which  were  not  closed  were  somnolent. 
At  Collingham  Lodge,  Max,  with  his  madly  joy- 
ful demonstrations,  was  the  only  expression  of 
life.  Within  the  house,  the  shades  were  down, 
the  furniture  befrocked.  Nevertheless,  it  was 
home,  and  all  the  more  home  after  the  alien 
pageantry  of  the  tropics  and  the  south.  Having 
bathed  and  changed  his  clothes,  he  found 
pleasure  in  roaming  from  one  dim  airless  room 
to  another,  as  if  he  had  been  absent  for  a  year. 

It  was  a  greater  pleasure  for  the  reason  that, 
ever  since  receiving  his  father's  amazing  cable- 
gram, the  vague  antagonism  he  had  felt  for  two 
or  three  years  toward  his  parents  had  given  place 
to  affection  and  gratitude.  They  had  seemingly 
come  round  after  all  to  acknowledging  his  right 
to  be  himself.  The  concession  gave  him  a  sense 
of  loving  them,  of  loving  the  things  that  belonged 
to  them.  He  strolled  into  their  rooms,  looking 
about  on  the  objects  they  used,  as  though  in 
this  way  he  got  some  contact  with  their  person- 
alities. 

As  yet,  Jennie's  family  hardly  entered  the 
sphere  of  his  conceptions.  He  knew  she  had 
a  mother  and  sisters;  he  had  seen  and  spoken  to 
Teddy  at  the  bank.  But  even  the  knowledge  that 
the  boy  was  in  jail  for  killing  a  man  didn't  bring 
him  or  them  near  to  him  as  realities.  While 

318 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

there  were  things  he  should  do  for  the  boy,  they 
would  not  be  done  for  him,  but  for  Jennie. 
What  concerned  her  naturally  concerned  her 
husband;  but  otherwise  his  father  and  mother 
came  first.  For  this  new  generosity  on  their 
part,  for  this  opening  of  the  arms,  his  heart 
glowed  toward  them,  making  them  sensibly  his 
own. 

He  was  thinking  of  this  as  he  stood  in  his 
mother's  room,  gazing  round  on  the  chintzy  com- 
fort he  had  all  his  life  regarded  with  some  awe. 
Not  since  he  had  been  a  little  boy  had  he  felt  so 
warmly  toward  her  as  now.  A  note  from  her  at 
Quarantine  had  assured  him,  as  she  had  assured 
him  before  he  went  to  South  America,  that  she 
was  his  mother  and  that  in  all  trials  he  could 
count  on  her.  Counting  on  her,  he  could  count 
on  everything,  for  however  difficult  his  father 
might  prove,  she  could  manage  him  in  the  end. 
It  made  everything  easier  for  him  and  for  Jennie, 
turning  an  anxious  outlook  on  life  into  a  splendid 
hopefulness. 

He  was  leaving  the  room  to  go  and  see  if  Mrs. 
Gull  had  cooked  a  chop  for  him  when  he  noticed, 
propped  against  the  wall  and  near  the  door  by 
which  he  had  come  in,  what  looked  like  a  picture 
carelessly  covered  with  a  crimson  cloth.  His 
mother  had  long  talked  of  having  her  portrait 
done;  he  wondered  if  it  could  be  that.  He  put 
his  hand  on  it,  and  felt  the  frame.  It  was  a 
picture,  and,  if  a  picture,  undoubtedly  the 
portrait. 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Let's  see  what  the  old  lady  looks  like,"  were 
the  words  that  passed  through  his  mind. 

With  a  twitch  the  cloth  was  off,  and  he  sprang 
back.  The  start  was  one  of  surprise.  Looking 
for  no  more  than  the  exquisite  conventionality 
he  knew  so  well,  this  vital  nudity  caught  his 
breath  and  made  his  heart  leap.  It  was  as  if  he 
had  actually  come  on  some  living  pagan  loveli- 
ness seated  in  one  of  the  empty  rooms.  Tann- 
hauser  first  beholding  the  goddess  in  the  secrecy 
of  the  Venusberg  must  have  felt  something  like 
this  amazed  tumult  of  the  senses. 

Turning  from  the  great  bay  window  in  which 
he  had  hastily  pulled  up  the  shades,  his  excite- 
ment had  consciously  in  it  a  presentiment  of  evil. 
She  was  so  alive,  and  so  much  there  on  purpose! 

Then  a  horror  stole  over  him,  like  a  chill  that 
struck  his  bones.  He  crept  forward,  with  a 
stricken,  fascinated  stare.  It  couldn't  be,  he  was 
saying  to  himself;  and  yet — and  yet — it  was. 

The  bearings  of  this  conviction  didn't  come  to 
him  all  at  once.  The  fact  was  as  much  as  he 
could  deal  with.  She  had  sat  and  been  painted 
like  this!  His  impressions  were  as  poignant  and 
confused  as  if  he  had  seen  her  struck  dead.  He 
couldn't  account  for  it.  He  couldn't  explain  the 
presence  of  the  thing  here  in  his  mother's  room. 

On  the  lower  bar  of  the  frame  he  saw  an  in- 
scription plate,  getting  down  on  all  fours  to  read 
it — "Life  and  Death:  by  Hubert  Wray." 

So  Hubert  had  done  it;  Hubert  had  seen  her  in 
this  flinging-ofF  of  mystery.  Of  course! 

320 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

His  thought  flashed  back  to  the  day  when  he 
had  first  made  her  acquaintance.  Leaning  a 
little  forward,  she  was  sitting  in  this  very  Byzan- 
tine chair,  on  this  very  dais,  wearing  a  flowered 
dress,  a  flower-wreathed  Leghorn  hat  in  her  lap. 
Wray,  in  a  painting  smock,  was  standing  with 
the  palette  and  brushes  in  his  hand,  making  a 
sketch  of  her  more  or  less  on  the  lines  of  a  Rey- 
nolds or  a.  Gainsborough.  He  had  dropped  him 
a  line  telling  him  he  had  taken  a  studio  and 
inviting  him  to  look  him  up.  He  hadn't  looked 
him  up  till  a  week  or  two  had  gone  by;  but,  hav- 
ing once  seen  this  girl,  he  did  so  soon  again. 

Of  him  she  had  taken  little  or  no  notice. 
When,  later,  he  forced  himself  on  her  attention, 
she  made  his  approaches  difficult.  When  he 
asked  her  to  marry  him  she  had  at  first  laughed 
him  off,  and  then  refused  him  in  so  many  words. 
But  as  she  generally  based  her  refusal,  uncon- 
sciously, perhaps,  on  the  social  differences  be- 
tween them,  he  wouldn't  take  her  "No"  for  an 
answer.  If  he  could  ignore  the  social  differences, 
it  seemed  to  him  that  she  could,  while  the  ad- 
vantages to  her  in  marrying  a  Collingham  were 
evident. 

"And  all  the  while  this  is  what  the  trouble 
was." 

What  he  meant  by  this  was  more  than  the 
picture,  "Life  and  Death,"  though  how  much 
more  he  made  no  attempt  to  measure.  The 
truth  that  now  emerged  for  him  out  of  his  mem- 
ory of  the  winter  months  was  that  Wray  loved 

321 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Jennie,  that  Jennie  loved  Wray,  and  that  he  had 
been  a  blind  fool  never  to  have  seen  it.  He 
threw  himself  on  his  mother's  couch,  burying 
his  face  in  the  cushions. 

As  much  as  from  anything  else  he  suffered 
from  the  breakdown  of  his  convictions.  He  had 
been  so  glib  on  the  subject  of  his  instinct.  Love 
could  make  mistakes,  he  had  said  to  Edith,  but 
instinct  couldn't.  He  had  been  the  other  half 
of  Jennie;  Jennie  had  been  the  other  half  of  him. 
She  couldn't  be  unfaithful  to  him,  because  he 
knew  she  couldn't.  His  love  was  protecting  her 
like  a  magic  cloak,  while  she  was.  .  .  .  The  awful 
shame  of  a  man  whose  foolish  stammerings  of 
passion  are  held  up  to  public  ridicule  seemed  to 
kill  the  heart  in  his  body. 

And  yet,  when  he  staggered  to  his  feet  and 
strode  toward  the  obsessing  thing  to  pull  the 
cloth  over  it  again,  he  started  back  once  more. 
The  woman  with  the  skull  had  changed.  She 
was  a  coarse  creature  now,  common  and  sensual. 
Amazement  pinned  him  to  the  spot,  his  hands 
raised  as  if  at  sight  of  an  apparition.  Then 
slowly,  insensibly,  weirdly,  Jennie  came  back 
again,  though  not  quite  the  Jennie  he  had  seen 
at  first.  This  Jennie  retained  the  traits  of  the 
second  woman — a  Jennie  coarsened,  common, 
and  sensual,  in  spite  of  being  exquisite,  too. 

He  walked  in  and  out  of  the  other  rooms  on 
the  floor,  so  as  to  clear  his  mind  of  the  suggestion. 
When  he  came  back,  he  saw  the  second  woman, 
and  the  second  woman  only;  but  having  moved 

322 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

into  a  new  light,  he  found  Jennie  there  as  before. 
It  was  like  sorcery.  Whether  the  thing  had  a 
baleful  life,  or  whether  his  perceptions  were 
growing  crazed,  he  couldn't  tell. 

Neither  could  he  tell  what  he  was  to  do  with 
regard  to  the  plans  he  had  been  making.  A 
hotel  in  New  York  now.  .  .  . 

But  the  immediate  duties  were  evident. 
Nominally  he  had  come  back  to  befriend  the 
boy,  and  the  boy  must  be  befriended.  To  do 
that  he  must  have  a  knowledge  of  the  facts. 
Farther  than  this  he  had  been  unable  to  progress 
even  by  the  hour,  in  the  early  afternoon,  when 
he  was  limping  along  Indiana  Avenue. 

He  had  telephoned  his  coming,  and  Jennie 
had  answered  in  a  dead  voice  which  could  hardly 
be  interpreted  as  a  welcome.  It  was  like  a  guilty 
voice,  he  said  to  himself,  though  he  corrected 
the  thought  instantly,  to  argue  in  favor  of 
emotion. 

He  had  spent  the  intervening  two  or  three 
hours  arguing.  Jennie  was  a  model,  and  he 
must  not  be  surprised  if  a  model's  work,  however 
startling  to  one  who  was  not  a  model,  should 
seem  a  matter  of  course  to  her.  All  professions 
had  peculiarities  strange  to  those  who  didn't 
belong  to  them,  and  the  model's  perhaps  most  of 
all.  He  couldn't  judge;  he  couldn't  condemn. 
He  must  try  to  understand  her  from  her  own 
point  of  view.  Probably  her  posing  in  this  way 
seemed  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  to 
her;  and,  if  so,  he  must  make  it  seem  the  same 

323 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

to  himself.  He  couldn't  expect  her  to  have  the 
hesitations  and  circumspections  of  a  girl  from 
Marillo  Park.  If  she  was  true  to  her  own 
standards,  it  was  all  he  had  a  right  to  look  for. 

And  yet  there  was  Wray.  He  had  long  seen 
in  Hubert  a  fellow  whom  no  girl  could  love  "and 
get  away  with  it."  These  were  the  words  he 
had  used  of  his  friend,  and  he  had  considered  the 
detail  none  of  his  business.  Most  men  were  that 
way,  more  or  less,  and  if  he  himself  wasn't,  it 
was  not  a  moral  excellence,  but  a  trick  of  tempera- 
ment. But  that  Jennie  was  in  danger  from  Wray 
was  a  thought  that  never  occurred  to  him.  Her 
innocence  and  defenselessnecs,  combined  with 
what  he  had  taken  to  be  a  kind  of  studio  code 
of  honor,  would  have  been  enough  to  protect 
her,  even  had  his  suspicions  been  roused,  which 
they  never  were.  He  tried  to  smother  those 
suspicions  even  now,  saying  to  himself  that  he 
had  nothing  against  her  except  that  she  had 
been  a  model — in  all  for  which  a  model  was  ever 
called  upon. 

He  had  that — and  the  timbre  of  her  voice  on 
the  telephone.  There  was  dismay  in  that  voice, 
and  terror.  If  it  wasn't  a  guilty  voice.  .  .  . 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  a  guilty  voice. 
In  an  overwhelming  consciousness  of  guilt,  Jennie 
had  spent  the  whole  of  the  ten  days  since  the 
coming  of  his  cablegram.  The  man  who  at  a 
distance  of  four  or  five  thousand  miles  could 
know  that  Teddy  was  in  jail  and  act  so  promptly 
for  the  good  of  all  might  be  aware  of  anything. 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Having  always  seemed  immense  and  over- 
shadowing, he  became  godlike  now  from  his 
sheer  display  of  power.  It  was  power  so  great 
that  she  could  put  forth  no  claim;  she  could  only 
wait  humbly  on  his  will. 

As,  hidden  behind  a  curtain,  she  watched  for 
his  coming  along  the  avenue,  all  her  thoughts 
were  focused  into  speculation  as  to  how  he 
would  approach  her.  Would  he  be  sorry  for 
having  married  her?  She  could  only  fear  that 
he  would  be.  She  had  never  mistrusted  his 
mother's  reading  of  his  character — that  he  made 
love  to  girls  one  day  and  forgot  them  the  next — 
in  addition  to  which  she  had  involved  him  in  this 
terrible  disgrace.  Whatever  excuse  those  who 
loved  Teddy  might  make  for  him,  the  fact  re- 
mained that  to  the  world  he  was  a  bank  robber 
and  a  murderer.  All  his  kin  must  share  in  the 
condemnation  meted  out  to  him,  and  Bob's  first 
task  as  a  married  man  must  be  that  of  defending 
her  and  hers  against  public  disdain.  He  might 
be  as  brave  as  a  lion  in  doing  that,  but,  she 
reasoned,  he  couldn't  like  the  necessity.  He 
might  say  he  did,  and  yet  she  wouldn't  be  able 
to  believe  him.  Even  if  he  still  cared  for  her  as 
he  had  cared  when  he  went  away,  his  marriage 
to  her  couldn't  possibly  be  viewed  otherwise 
than  as  a  misfortune;  and  he  might  not  still 
care  for  her. 

She  saw  him  as  he  limped  round  the  corner  at 
the  very  end  of  the  street.  He  wore  a  Panama 
hat  and  a  white-linen  suit.  Luckily,  Gussie  and 

325 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Gladys  had  gone  back  to  work  and  her  mother 
was  lying  down.  She  couldn't  have  borne  the 
suspense  had  she  not  been  all  alone.  Even 
Pansy's  searching  eyes,  as  she  stood  with  her 
little  squat  legs  planted  wide  apart,  trying  to 
understand  this  new  element  in  the  situation, 
were  almost  more  than  Jennie  could  endure. 

Bob  advanced  slowly,  examining  the  numbers 
of  the  houses,  many  of  which  were  lacking. 
Seventeen,  Fifteen,  and  Thirteen  were,  however, 
over  their  doors,  so  that  he  was  duly  prepared 
for  Eleven. 

"I'll  know  by  the  first  look  in  his  eyes,"  she 
kept  saying  to  herself,  "whether  he's  sorry  he 
married  me  or  not." 

As  he  passed  number  Thirteen  she  got  up  from 
the  arm  of  the  big  chair  on  which  she  had  been 
perched,  and  found  she  could  hardly  stand.  It 
was  all  she  could  do  to  creep  into  the  entry  and 
open  the  front  door.  When  he  turned  into  the 
little  cement  strip  leading  up  to  it,  she  shrank 
back  into  the  shadow.  He  was  abreast  of  the 
two  hydrangea  trees  before  he  saw  her.  When 
he  did  so  he  stood  still.  It  seemed  to  her  that  an 
unreckonable  time  went  by  before  a  smile  stole 
to  his  lips,  and  when  it  did  it  was  wavering, 
flickering,  more  poignant  than  no  smile  at  all. 

Her  inner  comment  was:  "Yes;  he's  sorry. 
Now  I  know."  Pride,  another  new  force  in  her 
character,  made  of  her  a  woman  with  a  will, 
as  she  added,  "I  must  help  him  to  get  out  of  it— 
somehow." 

326 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

But  Pansy,  sensing  a  nimbus  of  good  will  as 
imperceptible  to  Jennie  as  the  pervasive  scent 
of  the  summer,  lilted  down  the  steps,  raised  her 
forepaws  against  his  shin,  and  gazed  up  into  his 
face  adoringly. 
22 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

IT  was  a  help  to  Bob  Collingham  that  his 
first  glance  at  Jennie  decided  his  attitude  for 
the  near  future.  Whatever  his  doubts  and 
questionings,  he  could  add  nothing  to  the  trials 
she  had  to  face.  Whatever  she  had  done,  what- 
ever the  net  of  circumstances  in  which  she  had 
been  caught,  he  must  act  as  if,  as  far  as  he  him- 
self was  concerned,  he  was  satisfied.  Whether 
she  loved  him  or  whether  she  didn't,  or  whether 
her  duties  as  a  model  had  or  had  not  made  her 
indifferent  to  considerations  to  which  most 
people  were  sensitive,  were  questions  that  must 
be  postponed. 

This  conviction,  which  flashed  on  him  as  he 
saw  her  shrinking  in  the  entry,  was  confirmed 
when  he  felt  her  crumpled  in  his  arms,  relieved 
by  his  presence  and  yet  frightened  by  the  new 
conditions  which  it  wrought.  It  was  the  same 
dependent  but  rebellious  little  Jennie,  clinging 
to  him  and  yet  trying  to  slip  away  from  him. 
It  was  as  if  she  begged  for  a  love  which  the  per- 
versity of  her  tortured  little  heart  wouldn't 
allow  her  to  accept.  Very  well  then;  he  must 
measure  it  out  to  her  a  little  at  a  time,  as  you 
fed  a  sick  person  or  a  starving  man,  till  she  got 
used  to  it.  When  she  was  stronger  and  he  more 

328 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

at  peace  with  himself,  they  could  tackle  the 
personal  problems  between  them. 

So,  when  she  struggled  from  his  arms,  he  let 
her  go,  following  her  into  the  living-room. 

"Gussie  and  Gladys  are  back  at  work,"  she 
said  at  once,  to  explain  the  fact  that  none  of 
his  new  connections  were  there  to  greet  him, 
"and  momma's  lying  down.  She  always  lies 
down  at  this  time  of  day,  ever  since  daddy  died." 
She  dropped  into  one  big  shabby  armchair, 
motioning  him  to  another.  "And  there's  some- 
thing else  I  must  tell  you.  Ever  since — this 
thing  happened  to  Teddy — she  hasn't  been — 
well,  not  right  in  her  mind." 

The  stand  he  had  taken  became  more  impera- 
tive. A  father's  death,  a  mother's  collapse,  a 
brother's  crime  had  put  her  at  the  head  of  her 
little  troop  of  three,  to  bear  everything  alone. 
He  had  left  behind  him  an  inexperienced  girl; 
he  had  come  back  to  find  a  woman  already 
accustomed  to  rising  to  emergencies.  The 
change  was  perceptible  in  the  clearer,  slightly 
older  cutting  of  her  features,  as  well  as  in  the 
greater  authority  with  which  she  spoke.  Where 
the  contours  of  her  profile  had  been  soft  and 
vague,  there  was  now  a  delicate  chiseling;  where 
there  had  been  hesitation  in  words,  there  was 
now  the  firmness  of  one  obliged  to  know  her  mind. 

As  she  sketched  her  mother's  mental  state, 
he  sat  on  the  extreme  edge  of  his  big  chair, 
straining  forward  so  as  to  be  near  her  without 
touching  her,  his  fingers  clasped  between  his 

329 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

knees.  She  continued  to  speak  nervously,  with 
agitation,  and  yet  lucidly. 

"She  isn't  very  bad.  She's  only  what  you'd 
call  unsettled.  It's  not  that  she  does  anything, 
but  rather  that,  after  all  the  years  when  she's 
worked  so  hard,  she  just  sits  and  does  nothing. 
It's  as  if  she  was  lost  in  thinking;  and  when  she 
comes  back  she  says  such  terribly  strange 
things." 

"What  sort  of  things?" 

"For  one,  that  it's  no  use  living  any  longer — 
that  the  world's  so  bad  that  the  best  thing  left 
is  to  get  out  of  it.  She  says  you  can't  help  the 
world,  or  hope  to  see  it  improve,  because  human 
beings  will  always  reject  the  principles  that 
would  make  it  any  better." 

He  smiled  gently. 

"I've  heard  people  talk  like  that  who  weren't 
considered  unsettled  in  their  minds." 

"Oh,  but  she  doesn't  stop  there.  She  tells 
Teddy  he  was  quite  within  his  rights  in  taking 
money  from  the  bank,  and  when  she  goes  to  see 
him  she  begs  him  to  be  brave  and  not  be  sorry 
for  anything  he's  done." 

"And  is  he  sorry?" 

"I  don't  know  that  you  could  call  it  sorry. 
He's  dazed  and  bewildered.  He  knows  he  took 
the  money  and  that  he  killed  a  man;  but  he 
thinks  he  was  placed  in  a  position  where  he 
couldn't  help  it." 

"And  does  he  say  who  could  have  helped  it?" 

As  she  looked  down  at  that  twisting  and  un- 
330 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

twisting  of  her  fingers  which  was  the  chief  sign 
of  her  effort  at  self-control,  her  color  rose. 

"He  says  your  father  could  have  helped  it; 
but  I  don't  believe  he's  right." 

"No,  he  isn't  right — not  as  dad  himself  sees  it. 
I  know  he's  been  worried  ever  since  your 
father  left  the  bank;  but  he  thinks  he  couldn't 
help  dismissing  him.  Life  isn't  very  simple  for 
anyone — not  for  my  dad  any  more  than  it  was 
for  yours.  If  I  could  see  Teddy — " 

"Would  you  go  to  see  him?" 

"Go  to  see  him?  Why,  that's  what  I  came 
back  for!  I'd  like  to  do  it  this  very  afternoon, 
if  you'd  tell  me  first  how  it  all  came  about. 
You  see,  I  don't  know  anything,  except  the  two 
or  three  bald  facts  dad  mentioned  in  his  cable- 
gram." 

It  was  not  easy  to  tell  this  story,  even  to  a 
man  whom  she  knew  to  be  so  kind.  The  fact 
that  he  was  her  husband  didn't  help  her,  for  the 
reason  that  it  was  because  he  was  her  husband 
that  her  pride  was  in  revolt.  Had  he  not  been 
her  husband,  he  would  have  been  free  to  with- 
draw from  this  series  of  catastrophes.  Now  he 
could  not  withdraw.  He  was  tied. 

Moreover,  the  sordid  tale  of  domestic  want 
became  the  more  sordid  when  given  fact  by  fact. 
It  v\is  the  intimate  story  of  her  life  in  contrast 
to  the  intimate  story  of  his.  The  homely  family 
dodges  for  making  both  ends  meet  which  had 
been  the  mere  jest  of  penury  between  Gussie, 
Gladys,  and  herself  became  ghastly  when  ex- 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

posed  to  a  man  who  had  never  known  the  lack 
of  service  and  luxury,  to  say  nothing  of  food 
and  drink,  since  the  minute  he  was  born.  She 
felt  as  if  it  emptied  her  of  any  little  dignity  she 
had  ever  possessed,  as  if  it  denuded  her  of  self- 
respect.  She  could  more  easily  have  confessed 
sins  to  him  than  the  shifts  to  which  they  had 
been  put  to  live. 

Nevertheless,  she  went  through  with  it, 
brokenly,  with  great  effort,  and  yet  with  a  kind 
of  dogged  will  to  drain  all  the  dregs  of  the  cup. 

"He'll  see  me  as  I  am,"  was  part  of  her 
underlying  thought.  "He'll  know  then  that 
I  can't  go  on  with  this  comedy  of  having  married 
him.  Even  if  I  have,  we've  got  to  end  it  some- 
how." 

But  on  his  side  the  reaction  was  different. 
He  had  never  heard  this  sort  of  tale  before.  He 
had  never  before  been  in  contact  with  this  phase 
of  poverty.  He  had  known  poor  men  in  college, 
and  plenty  of  chaps  who  were  down  on  their 
luck;  but  the  daily  pinching  and  paring  of  whole 
families  just  to  have  enough  to  eat  and  to  wear 
was  so  new  as  to  astonish  him.  For  the  minute 
it  made  Jennie  less  an  individual  than  a  type. 

"My  God!"  he  was  saying  inwardly,  "do  hu- 
man beings  have  to  live  so  close  to  the  edge  as 
all  that?" 

When  she  had  told  him  of  the  incident  of  the 
cutting  off  of  the  gas  because  they  couldn't  pay 
fifteen  dollars  on  account,  the  turning  point  of 
Teddy's  tragedy,  his  exclamation  was  embar- 

332 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

rassing  to  them  both:  "Why,  I  pay  twice  that 
for  a  pair  of  shoes!"  Though  she  knew  he  meant 
it  as  a  protest  against  the  straits  to  which  they 
had  been  put,  it  seemed  both  to  him  and  to  her 
to  make  the  gulf  between  them  wider. 

"And  you  were  going  through  all  that,"  he 
said,  when  she  had  finished  her  recital,  "during 
the  months  when  I  was  seeing  you  two  and  three 
times  a  week  at  the  studio.  My  God!  how  I 
wish  you  could  have  told  me!" 

It  was  the  first  time  that  a  little  smile  came 
quivering  to  her  lips. 

"You  don't  tell  things  like  that — not  to  any- 
one outside  your  family.  Besides,  it  isn't  .worth 
while.  You  get  used  to  them." 

"You  weren't  used  to  it — when  your  mother 
cried — and  Teddy  forked  out  the  money." 

"Not  to  that  very  thing — but  to  things  like 
it.  If  Teddy  hadn't  forked  out  the  money,  we 
should  have  worried  through  somehow.  That's 
the  awful  thing  about  it — that  if  he  hadn't  done 
it  we  shouldn't  have  been  much  worse  off  than 
we'd  been  at  other  times.  A  little  worse — yes — 
even  a  good  deal,  perhaps;  and  yet  we  could  have 
lived  through  it.  I  couldn't  have  told  you,  be- 
cause people  of  our  kind  don't  talk  about  such 
things,  not  even  with  their  neighbors.  We  just 
take  them  for  granted." 

It  was  this  taking  it  for  granted  that  impressed 
him  with  such  a  sense  of  the  terrible.  It  left  so 
little  room  for  living,  so  limited  a  swing  to  do 
anything  but  scrape.  Scraping  was  the  whole  of 

333 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Jennie's  history.  He  could  see  it  as  she  talked. 
She  had  never  in  her  life  had  fifty  dollars  to  do 
with  as  she  chose.  Perhaps  she  had  never  had 
five.  It  was  not  the  lack  of  the  money  that 
overwhelmed  him,  but  of  any  freedom  to  move, 
of  any  scope  in  which  to  grow. 

Forgetting  his  reserves  of  the  morning,  he 
caught  her  by  both  hands,  holding  them  im- 
prisoned in  her  lap. 

"But  that's  all  over  now,  Jennie.  You're  my 
wife.  You're  coming  to  me — right  off — to-day 
— this  very  afternoon." 

"Oh,  Bob,  I  couldn't!"  If  he  was  to  be  "got 
out  of  it,"  she  felt  it  essential  to  gain  time.  "I 
couldn't  leave  them.  Don't  you  see?  There's 
no  one  but  me  to  keep  house  or — or  to  decide 
anything.  Momma's  given  up  entirely,  and 
Gussie  and  Gladys  are  both  so  young  that  I 
couldn't  possibly  leave  them  alone." 

"Then  we'll  have  to  manage  it  some  other 
way." 

"No;   not  yet.    Let's  wait.    Let's  see." 

"Waiting  and  seeing  won't  change  the  fact 
that  we're  man  and  wife  and  that  everyone 
knows  it.  It's  been  in  the  papers — " 

"Yes,  but  why  did  you  put  it  in?"  It  was  her 
turn  to  seek  information.  "To  me  it  was  like  a 
thunderbolt." 

He  gave  her  the  contents  of  his  father's 
cablegram. 

"I  took  it  for  granted  that  you. must  have  told 
him." 

334 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I  shouldn't  have  done  that.  I  did — I  did  tell 
your  mother,  Bob — but  then  I  couldn't  help  it." 

He  started  back,  releasing  her  hands  which  he 
had  continued  holding. 

"What?x    You've  seen  the  old  lady?" 

She  nodded.  "Yes;  she  sent  for  me  to  go  out 
to  Marillo  Park." 

"For  Heaven's  sake!  What  made  her  do 
that?" 

She  was  aware  of  her  opportunity.  If  she 
wanted  to  "get  him  out  of  it,"  now  was  her 
chance.  She  could  tell  him  part  of  the  truth  and 
keep  him  dangling — or  the  whole  of  it  and  let 
him  go.  "Fairer  to  him — and  easier  for  me" 
was  the  thought  on  which  she  based  her  decision. 

"She — she  wanted  to  thank  me  for — for  not 
having  taken  you  at  your  word  and  married 
you." 

"Oh!  So  you  had  to  tell  her  that  you  had. 
And  what  did  she  say  to  that?" 

"She  was  lovely." 

He  beamed  with  pleasure. 

"She  can  be  when  she  takes  the  notion,  just 
as  she  can  be  the  other  way.  She  must  have 
liked  you." 

"I— I  think  she  did." 

"You  bet  she  did!  She'd  let  you  see  it  if  she 
didn't.  So  that's  what  smoothed  the  way  for  us! 
I  couldn't  make  it  out.  You  certainly  are  a 
little  witch,  Jennie!" 

"It  isn't  as  smooth  as  all  that."  Springing  to 
her  feet,  she  turned  her  back  on  him,  moving 

335 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

away  toward  the  window.  "Oh,  Bob,  I  wish 
I  didn't  have  to  tell  you.  You're  so  good  and 
kind,  and  I've  been  so" — it  came  out  with  a 
burst  of  confession,  her  arms  outstretched,  her 
hands  spread  palms  upward — "I've  been  so 
awful!  When  you  know — " 

"Wait!"  He  seized  her  by  the  shoulders  with 
the  force  which  calms  emotion  from  sheer 
fright.  "Wait,  Jennie!  I  know  what  you're 
going  to  tell  me." 

"Oh,  but  you  can't." 

"It's — it's  something  about  Wray,  isn't  it?" 

She  nodded  dumbly. 

"Then  we'll  put  it  off.  Do  you  see?  That 
isn't  what  I  came  back  for.  I  came  back  about 
Teddy,  and  we  must  see  that  through  before 
we  think  of  ourselves.  All  that  '11  keep — " 

"  It  won't  keep  if  we  go  and  live  together." 

"Then  we  won't  go  and  live  together — not 
till  we  see  how  it's  to  be  done.  That's  just  a 
detail.  In  comparison  with  Teddy,  it  doesn't 
matter  one  way  or  another.  We'll  come  to  it 
by  and  by.  All  we've  got  to  think  of  now  is 
that  there's  a  boy  whose  life  is  hanging  by  a 
thread—" 

"Yes;  but  I  don't  want  you  to  be  mixed  up 
in  it.  I  want  to — to  save  you  from — from  the 
sacrifice — and — and  the  disgrace." 

He  stood  back  from  her  with  a  hard  little  laugh. 

"Good  God!  Jennie,  I  wonder  if  you  have  the 
faintest  idea  of  what  love  is!  You  can't  have. 
Do  you  suppose  it  matters  to  me  what  I'm  mixed 

336 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

up  in  so  long  as  it's  something  that  touches  you  ? 
Listen!  Let  me  explain  to  you  what  love  is  like 
when  it's  the  kind  I  feel  for  you.  I" — he  braced 
himself  in  order  to  bring  out  the  words  forcibly — 
"I  don't  care  what  Wray  is  to  you  or  what  you 
are  to  Wray — not  yet.  I  put  that  away  from  me 
till  I've  gone  with  you  through  the  things  you've 
got  to  meet.  They'll  not  be  easy  for  you,  but  I 
want  to  make  them  as  easy  as  I  can.  No  one 
can  do  it  but  me,  because  no  one  cares  for  you  as 
I  do." 

"Oh,  I  know  that." 

"Then,  if  you  know  it,  Jennie,  don't  force 
anything  else  on  me  when  I'm  doing  my  best  not 
to  think  of  it.  Let  me  just  love  you  as  well  as  I 
know  how  till  we  do  the  things  that  are  right  in 
front  of  us.  After  that,  if  there's  a  reason  why 
I  should  hand  you  over  to  Wray,  or  to  anybody 
else,  you  can  tell  me,  and  I'll— 

Pansy's  scrambling  to  attention  and  a  sound 
on  the  stairs  arrested  his  words  as  well  as  Jennie's 
rising  tears. 

"Momma's  coming  down,"  the  girl  whispered, 
hurriedly.  "She  wants  to  see  you.  Don't  forget 
that  you're  not  to  mind  anything  she  says." 

To  Bob,  the  moment  was  one  of  awed  surprise, 
for  the  commanding,  black-robed  figure  differed 
from  all  his  preconceptions,  as  far  as  he  had  any, 
of  Jennie's  mother.  Advancing  rapidly  into  the 
room,  she  took  his  right  hand  in  hers,  laying  her 
left  on  his  head  as  if  in  benediction. 

"So  you're  my  Jennie's  husband.  I  hope 
337 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

you're  a  good  man,  for  youVe  found  a  good 
woman.  Be  loving  to  each  other.  The  time  is 
coming  when  love  is  all  that  will  survive.  Let  me 
look  at  you." 

He  stood  off,  smiling,  while  she  made  her 
inspection. 

"Love  is  all  there  is,  anyhow,  don't  you  think, 
Mrs.  Follett?" 

"Yes;   but  it  gets  no  chance  in  this  world." 

"Or  it  is  the  only  thing  that  does  get  a 
chance  ? " 

"It  may  be  the  only  thing  that  does  get  a 
chance,  but  that  chance  is  small.  There's  no 
hope  for  the  world.  Don't  think  there  is,  because 
you'll  be  disappointed.  Each  time  your  disap- 
pointment is  worse  than  the  last,  till  you  end  in 
despair." 

It  was  the  strain  Jennie  felt  obliged  to  inter- 
rupt. 

"Momma,  Mr.  Collingham  is  going  to  see 
Teddy.  Don't  you  want  him  to  take  a  message  ? " 

"Only  the  message  I've  given  him  myself — 
that  it's  only  a  little  way  over,  and  that  one  of 
two  things  must  happen  then.  It  will  either  be 
sleep,  in  which  nothing  will  matter,  or  it  will  be 
life,  in  which  he'll  be  free — understood — sup- 
ported— instead  of  being  beaten  and  crushed  and 
mangled,  as  everyone  is  here.  Tell  him  that." 

He  felt  it  his  duty  to  be  cheerier. 

"On  the  other  hand,  we  may  get  him  off;  or 
if  we  can't  get  him  off  altogether — 

"What  good  would  that  do — your  getting  him 
338 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

off?  You'd  be  throwing  him  back  again  on  a 
world  that  doesn't  want  him." 

"Oh,  but  surely  the  world  does — " 

"Yes;  the  world  does— I'm  wrong — it  does  to 
the  same  extent  that  it  wanted  his  father — to 
give  it  every  ounce  of  his  strength  with  a  pit- 
tance for  his  pay — to  spend  and  be  spent  till 
he's  good  for  nothing  more — and  then  to  be 
thrown  aside  to  starve.  It's  possible  that  even 
now  Teddy  would  be  willing  to  do  this  if  they'd 
only  let  him  live;  but  tell  him  it's  not  good 
enough.  I've  told  him,  and  I  don't  think  he 
believes  me;  but  you're  a  man,  and  perhaps  you 
can  make  him  see  it." 

"Yes,  momma  dear,  he'll  do  the  best  he 
can—" 

"It  won't  be  the  best  he  can  if  he  tries  to  keep 
him  here.  We've  passed  on,  my  boy  and  I.  Only 
our  bodies  are  still  on  the  earth,  and  that  for  just 
a  little  while.  A  year  from  now  and  we'll  both 
be  safe — so  safe! — and  yet  you'd  try  to  keep  us 
in  a  world  where  men  make  a  curse  of  every- 
thing." 

But  Teddy  himself  was  less  reconciled  than 
his  mother  to  bidding  the  world  good-by.  In 
proportion  as  his  physical  strength  returned, 
the  fate  that  had  overtaken  him  became  more 
and  more  preposterous.  To  suppose  that  he 
had  of  his  own  criminal  intention  stolen  money 
and  killed  a  man  was  little  short  of  insane.  A 
man  had  been  killed  by  a  pistol  he  held  in  his 

339 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

hand;  he  had  taken  money  because  the  need 
was  such  that  he  couldn't  help  himself;  but  he, 
Teddy  Follett,  was  neither  a  thief  nor  a  mur- 
derer in  any  sense  involving  the  exercise  of  will. 
He  was  sure  of  that.  He  declared  it  to  himself 
again  and  again  and  again.  It  was  all  that 
gave  him  fighting  force,  compelling  him  to  insist, 
to  assert  himself,  and  to  protest  in  season  and 
out  of  season  against  being  shut  up  in  a  cell. 

The  cell  was  seven  feet  long  and  four  feet  wide. 
Round  the  foot  of  the  bunk  and  along  the  sides 
there  was  a  space  of  some  twelve  inches.  At  the 
foot  there  was  the  iron-ribbed  door  with  a 
grating,  and  along  the  sides  a  slimy  and  viscous 
stone  wall.  Besides  the  bunk,  a  bucket,  and  a 
shelf  there  was  nothing  whatever  in  the  way 
of  furnishings.  Under  the  bed  he  was  privileged 
to  keep  the  suitcase  with  his  wardrobe,  and  on 
the  shelf  whatever  his  mother  and  sisters  brought 
him  in  the  way  of  food.  By  day,  the  only  light 
was  through  the  grating  to  the  corridor;  by 
night,  a  feeble  electric  bulb  was  extinguished  at 
half  past  nine.  The  Brig  being  an  ancient 
prison,  and  Teddy  but  one  of  a  long,  long  line  of 
murderers  who  had  lain  on  this  hard  bed,  vermin 
infested  everything. 

While  Bob  Collingham  was  on  his  way  to  him 
Teddy  was  in  conversation  with  the  chaplain. 
For  this  purpose,  the  door  had  been  unlocked. 
The  visitor  leaned  against  the  door  post  while 
the  prisoner  stood  in  the  narrow  space  between 
his  bunk  and  the  wall. 

340 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

It  was  the  Protestant  chaplain,  a  tall,  spare, 
sandy-haired  man  of  some  fifty-odd,  whose 
yearning,  spiritual  face  had,  through  long  asso- 
ciation with  his  flock,  grown  tired  and  disillu- 
sioned. Having  sought  this  post  from  a  genuine 
sympathy  with  outcast  men,  he  suffered  from 
their  rejection.  He  was  so  sure  of  what  would 
help  them,  and  only  one  in  a  hundred  ever 
wanted  it.  Even  that  one  generally  laughed  at 
it  when  he  got  out  of  jail.  After  eighteen  years 
of  self-denying  work,  the  worthy  man  was  sadly 
pessimistic  now  as  to  prospects  of  reform. 

For  the  minute  he  was  trying  to  convince 
Teddy  of  the  righteousness  of  punishment.  He 
had  been  drawn  to  the  boy  partly  because  of 
his  youth  and  good  looks,  but  mainly  on  account 
of  his  callousness  to  his  crime.  He  seemed  to 
have  no  conscience,  no  notion  of  the  difference 
between  right  and  wrong.  "A  moral  moron" 
was  what  he  labeled  him.  The  lack  of  ethical 
consciousness  was  the  more  astonishing  because 
his  antecedents  had  apparently  been  good. 

"You  see,"  he  was  pointing  out,  "you  can't 
break  the  laws  by  which  society  protects  itself 
and  yet  escape  the  moral  and  physical  results." 

But  in  his  long,  solitary  hours  Teddy  had 
been  thinking  this  out. 

"Doesn't  that  depend  upon  the  laws?  If  the 
law's  wrong — " 

"But  who's  to  judge  of  that?" 

"Isn't  the  citizen  to  judge  of  that?" 

The  parson  smiled — his  weary,  spiritual  smile. 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"If  the  citizen  was  allowed  to  judge  of 
that—" 

"If  he  wasn't,"  Teddy  broke  in,  with  the 
impetuosity  born  of  his  beginning  to  think  for 
himself,  "if  he  wasn't,  there'd  be  no  such  country 
as  the  United  States.  Most  of  the  fireworks  in 
American  history  are  over  the  fine  thing  it  is  to 
beat  the  law  to  it  when  the  law  isn't  just." 

"Ah,  but  there's  a  distinction  between  individ- 
ual action  and  great  popular  movements." 

"Great  popular  movements  must  be  made  up 
of  individual  actions,  mustn't  they?  If  in- 
dividuals didn't  break  the  laws,  each  guy  on  his 
own  account,  you  wouldn't  get  any  popular 
movements  at  all." 

The  chaplain  shifted  his  ground. 

"All  the  same,  there  are  certain  laws  that 
among  all  peoples  and  at  all  times  have  been 
considered  fundamental.  Human  society  can't 
permit  a  man  to  steal — " 

"Then  human  society  shouldn't  put  a  man 
in  a  position  where  he  either  has  to  steal  or 
starve  to  death." 

There  was  a  repetition  of  the  thin,  ghostly 
smile. 

"Oh,  well,  no  one  who's  ordinarily  honest  and 
industrious  ever — " 

"Ever  starves  to  death?  That's  a  lie.  Excuse 
me,"  he  added,  apologetically,  "but  that  kind  of 
talk  just  gets  my  goat.  My  father  practically 
starved  to  death — he  died  from  lack  of  proper  nour- 
ishment, the  doctor  said — and  there  never  was  a 

342 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

more  industrious  or  an  honester  man  born.  He 
gave  everything  he  had  to  human  society,  and 
when  he  had  no  more  to  give,  human  society 
kicked  him  out.  It  has  the  law  on  its  side,  too, 
and  because" — he  gulped — "I  came  to  his  help 
in  the  only  way  I  knew  how  they've  chucked 
me  into  this  black  hole." 

The  chaplain  found  another  kind  of  opening. 

"So,  you  see,  my  boy,  there's  that.  If  you 
don't  keep  the  law — 

"They  can  make  you  suffer  for  it,"  Teddy  de- 
clared, excitedly.  "Of  course  they  can.  They've 
made  me  suffer — God!  how  they've  made  me 
suffer — more,  I  believe,  than  anyone  since  Jesus 
Christ!  But  that's  not  what  we  were  talking 
about.  You  started  in  to  tell  me  that  it's  right 
for  me  to  suffer  the  way  they're  making  me. 
That's  what  I  kick  against,  and  I'll  keep  on 
kicking  till  they  send  me  to  the  chair." 

"If  you  could  do  yourself  any  good  by  that — " 

But  just  here  the  dialogue  was  interrupted  by 
the  appearance  of  Boole,  the  dapper,  debonair 
young  guard  who  generally  announced  Teddy's 
afternoon  visitors. 

"Hello,  old  cuss!    Gent  to  see  you.'* 

The  chaplain  prepared  to  move  on  to  the  neigh- 
boring cell.  His  leave-taking  was  kindly  and 
with  a  great  pity  in  it. 

"We'll  go  on  with  this  talk  again,  my  boy. 
When  you're  able  to  get  the  right  point  of 
view — " 

What  would  happen  then  was  drowned  in  the 
23  343 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

clanging  of  the  door  behind  him,  as  Teddy 
stepped  out  into  the  corridor. 

"Who  is  it?  Stenhouse?"  he  asked,  as  he 
walked  along  with  the  guard. 

He  had  already  dropped  into  the  prisoner's 
habitual  tone  of  hostile  friendliness  toward  the 
officials  with  whom  he  came  most  in  contact, 
recognizing  the  fact  that  had  he  met  any  of 
these  men  "on  the  outside"  they  would  have 
hobnobbed  together  with  the  freemasonry  of 
American  young  men  everywhere.  On  their 
sides  the  keepers,  apart  from  the  fact  that  they 
considered  Teddy  "a  tough  lot,"  had  ceased  to 
show  him  animosity. 

"It's  not  the  lawyer,"  Boole  answered  now. 
"It's  a  swell  guy  with  a  limp.  Looks  to  me  as  if 
he  might  be  the  gay  young  banker  sport  that  the 
papers  say  is  married  to  your  sister." 

Teddy  felt  his  heart  contracting  in  a  spasm  of 
dread.  The  one  fact  he  knew  of  his  brother-in- 
law  was  that  he  had  sent  him  Stenhouse,  one  of 
the  three  or  four  lawyers  most  famous  at  the 
New  Jersey  bar  for  saving  lives.  This  detail, 
too,  the  boy  had  learned  from  Boole. 

"You'll  not  get  the  cur'nt,  with  him  to  defend 
you,  believe  me.  Some  bird !  If  he  can't  prove 
you  innocent,  he'll  find  a  flaw  in  the  law  or  the 
indictment  or  somethin'.  Why,  they  say  he 
once  got  a  guy  off,  a  Pole,  the  fella  was,  just  on 
the  spellin'  of  his  name." 

Having  been  warned  by  Stenhouse  not  to 
discuss  his  case  with  anyone,  Teddy  was  dis- 

344 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

erectly  silent.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  had  too 
much  to  think  of  to  be  inclined  to  talk.  The  cir- 
cumstance that  "young  Coll"  had  become  a 
relative  was  one  of  which  he  was  just  beginning 
to  seize  the  importance.  His  bruised  mind  had 
been  unable  at  first  to  apprehend  it.  Slowly  he 
was  coming  to  the  realized  knowledge  that  he 
was  allied  to  that  Olympian  race  which  the 
Collinghams  represented  to  the  Folletts,  and  that, 
at  least,  some  of  their  power  was  engaged  on  his 
behalf. 

It  was  confusing.  Since  the  might  that  had 
struck  him  down  was  also  coming  to  his  aid,  the 
issue  was  no  longer  clear-cut.  To  have  all  the 
right  on  one  side  and  all  the  wrong  on  the  other 
had  simplified  life.  Now,  a  right  that  was 
partly  wrong  and  a  wrong  that  was  partly  right 
had  been  personified,  as  it  were,  in  this  union 
through  which  a  Collingham  had  become  a  Fol- 
lett,  and  a  Follett  a  Collingham. 

Young  Coll  was  standing  where  Jennie  had 
stood  on  the  first  occasion  of  Teddy's  coming  to 
the  visitors'  room.  He  too  waited  with  a  smile. 
The  minute  he  saw  the  lad  appear  timidly  on  the 
threshold  he  limped  forward  with  outstretched 
hand. 

"Hello,  Teddy!"  His  embarrassment,  being 
a  kindly  embarrassment,  was  without  awkward- 
ness. "You  didn't  know  I  was  going  to  be 
your  brother  the  last  time  you  saw  me,  did  you?" 

Teddy  said  nothing.  He  was  not  sullen,  but 
neither  was  he  friendly.  A  Collingham,  even 

345 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

though  married  to  his  sister,  was  probably  a 
person  to  be  feared.  Teddy's  counsel  to  himself 
was  to  be  on  his  guard  against  "the  nigger  in 
the  woodpile." 

"Perhaps  it  was  my  fault  that  you  didn't," 
Bob  went  on,  with  some  constraint.  "That's 
the  reason  why  I'm  here.  I  dare  say  there  isn't 
much  I  can  do  for  you,  old  boy,  but  what  little 
there  is  I  want  to  do." 

Teddy  eyed  him  steadily,  still  without  making 
a  reply.  Somehow  they  found  chairs.  Boole, 
having  once  more  summed  up  the  visitor,  had 
retreated  toward  the  guard  who  sat  officially  at 
the  far  end  of  the  room. 

"Looks  like  a  good  cuss,"  was  Boole's  whis- 
pered confidence.  "Kind  o'  soft — like  most  o* 
them  swell  sports  that  marries  working  goyls." 

Bob  was  finding  himself  less  and  less  at  his 
ease.  The  boy  not  only  came  none  of  the  way 
to  meet  him,  but  seemed  to  hold  him  as  an 
enemy.  By  his  silence  and  by  the  severity  of  his 
regard  he  conveyed  the  impression  that  young 
Cell,  and  not  himself,  had  done  the  wrong. 

It  was  an  attitude  for  which  Bob  was  not  pre- 
pared. Neither  was  he  prepared  for  the  deface- 
ment of  all  that  had  been  glowing  in  the  lad's 
countenance.  Jennie  had  warned  him  against 
expecting  the  ruddy  bright-eyed  Teddy  of  the 
bank,  but  he  hadn't  looked  for  this  air  of  youth 
blasted  out  of  youthfulness.  It  was  still  youth, 
but  youth  marred,  terrified,  haunted,  with  a  fear 
beyond  that  of  gibbering  old  age. 
346 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

With  his  lovingness  and  quickness  of  pity, 
Bob  sought  for  a  line  by  which  he  could  catch 
on  to  the  lad's  interest. 

"I  asked  my  father  to  send  you  the  best 
counsel  in  New  Jersey,  and  I  believe  he's  picked 
out  Stenhouse." 

Teddy  regarded  him  grimly. 

"Yes,  he  did."  It  seemed  as  if  he  meant  to 
say  no  more,  when,  with  a  sardonic  grunt,  he  went 
on,  "Something  like  a  guy  who  smashes  a  ma- 
chine and  then  gets  the  best  mechanician  in  the 
world  to  come  and  patch  it  up." 

"Yes — possibly — it  may  be.  Only,  there's 
this  to  consider — that  no  one  smashes  a  machine 
on  purpose." 

"No,  I  don't  suppose  he  does.  Only,  it's  all 
the  same  to  the  machine  whether  it's  been 
smashed  on  purpose  or  by  accident — so  long  as 
it  '11  never  run  again." 

Bob  considered  this. 

"You  might  say  that  of  a  machine — a  dead 
thing  from  the  start.  You  can't  say  it  of  a  hu- 
man being,  who's  alive  from  the  beginning.  See  ? " 

"No,  I  don't  see." 

"And  I  don't  know  that  I  can  explain.  I'm 
only  sure  that  a  machine  can  be  done  for,  and 
that  a  human  being  can't  be.  You  can  come  to 
a  time  when  it's  no  use  doing  anything  more  for 
the  one;  but  you  can  never  reach  such  a  time 
with  the  other.  With  him,  you  may  make  mis- 
takes or  you  may  do  him  a  great  wrong,  but  you 
can't  stop  trying  to  put  things  right  again." 

347 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"And  you  think  you  can  put  things  right  again 
forme?" 

"I  don't  know  what  I  can  do.  I  haven't  an 
idea.  Very  likely  I  can't  do  anything  at  all.  I 
merely  came  back  from  South  America  to  do 
what  I  could." 

"  Did  you  feel  that  you  had  to — because  you'd 
married  Jennie?" 

"That  was  a  reason.    It  wasn't  the  only  one." 

"What  else  was  there?" 

"I'm  not  sure  that  I  can  tell  you.  A  lot  of  the 
things  we  do  we  do  not  from  reason,  but  from 
instinct.  But  if  you  don't  want  me  to  try  to 
take  a  hand — " 

Under  the  dark  streaks  that  blotted  out  what 
had  once  been  Teddy's  healthy  coloring  a  slow 
flush  began  to  mantle. 

"I  don't  want  to  be — to  be  bamboozled." 

"Of  course  you  don't.  But  how  could  I  bam- 
boozle you?" 

There  was  no  explanation.  Unable  to  base 
his  distrust  on  any  other  ground  than  that  Bob 
was  the  son  of  the  man  who  had  dismissed  Josiah 
Follett  from  the  bank,  Teddy  fell  silent  again. 
He  could  not  afford  to  reject  the  least  good  will 
that  came  his  way,  and  yet  his  spirit  was  too  sore 
to  accept  it  graciously. 

Some  of  this  young  Collingham  divined.  He 
began  to  see  that  as  the  boy  was  suffering  and 
he  wasn't,  it  was  not  for  him  to  take  offense. 
On  the  contrary,  he  must  use  all  his  ingenuity 
to  find  the  way  to  make  his  appeal  effectively. 

348 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"All  I  could  do  from  down  there,"  he  said, 
when  Teddy  seemed  indisposed  to  speak  again, 
"was  to  get  Stenhouse  or  some  one  to  take  up 
your  case.  I  mean  to  see  him  in  the  morning 
and  find  out  how  far  he's  got  along  with  it.  But 
now  that  I'm  here,  can't  you  think  of  something 
of  your  own  that  you'd  like  me  to  do?" 

Teddy  raised  his  eyes  quickfy.  His  look  was 
the  dull  look  of  anguish,  and  yet  with  sharpness 
in  the  glance. 

"What  kind  of  thing?" 

"Any  kind.  Think  of  the  thing  that's  most  on 
your  mind^-the  thing  that  worries  you  more 
than  anything  else — and — put  it  up  to  me." 
The  somberness  deepened  in  the  lad's  face,  not 
from  resentment,  but  from  heaviness  of  thought. 
"Go  ahead,"  Bob  urged.  "Cough  it  up.  If 
it's  something  I  can't  tackle,  I'll  tell  you  so." 

"What's  most  on  my  mind,"  Teddy  began, 
slowly,  gritting  his  teeth  with  the  effort  to  get 
the  words  out,  "what  worries  me  like  hell — is 
ma — and  the  girls.  They — they  must  be  lone- 
some— something  fierce — without  me." 

In  his  agony  of  controlling  himself  he  was 
rubbing  his  palms  between  his  knees,  but  Bob 
put  out  his  great  hand  and  seized  him  by  the 
wrist. 

"Look  here,  old  chap!  I  can't  comfort  them 
for  your  not  being  there.  You  know  that,  of 
course.  But  it  always  helps  women  to  have  a 
man  coming  and  going  in  the  house — to  take  a 
lot  of  things  off  itheir  hands — and  keep  them 

349 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

company — and  I'll  do  that.  If  I  can't  be  every- 
thing that  you'd  be — " 

"You  can  be  more  than  I  could  ever  be." 

"Yes — from  the  point  of  view  of  having  a 
little  more  money — and  freedom — and  a  car  to 
take  them  out  in — and  all  that;  but  if  you  think 
I  could  ever  make  up  to  them  for  you,  old  sport — 
but  that  isn't  what  you  want  me  to  do,  is  it? 
You  don't  want  me  to  be  you,  but  to  be  some- 
thing different — only,  something  that  '11  make 
your  mother  and  Jennie  and  your  little  sisters 
buck  up  again — " 

Stumbling  to  his  feet,  Teddy  drew  the  back 
of  his  hand  across  his  eyes. 

"I — I  guess  I'd  better  beat  it,"  he  muttered, 
unsteadily.  "They — they  don't  like  you  to  stay 
out  too  long." 

But  Bob  forced  him  gently  back  into  his  chair 
again. 

"Oh,  cheese  that,  Teddy!  Sit  down  and  let's 
get  better  acquainted.  I  want  to  tell  you  how 
Jennie  and  I  made  up  our  minds  to  get  married." 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

AND  yet  it's  one  of  the  commonest  types 
of  the  criminal  mind,"  Stenhouse  was 
explaining  to  Bob  during  the  following  forenoon. 
"Fellows  perfectly  normal  in  every  respect  but 
that  of  their  own  special  brand  of  crime.  See 
no  harm  in  that  whatever.  Won't  have  a 
cigar?" 

Having  declined  the  cigar  for  the  third  time, 
Bob  found  a  subconscious  fascination  in  watching 
the  lawyer's  Havana  travel  from  one  corner  to 
the  other  of  his  long,  mobile,  thin-lipped  mouth. 
It  was  interesting,  too,  to  get  a  view  of  Teddy's 
case  different  from  Jennie's. 

There  was  nothing  about  Stenhouse,  unless 
it  was  his  repressed  histrionic  intensity,  to  sug- 
gest the  saver  of  lives.  Outwardly,  he  was  a 
lank,  clean-shaven  Yankee,  of  ill-assorted  features 
and  piercing  gimlet  eyes.  But  something  about 
him  suggested  power  and  an  immense  persuasive- 
ness. He  had  only  to  wake  from  the  quiescent 
mood  in  which  he  was  talking  to  Bob  to  become 
an  actor  or  a  demagogue.  With  laughter,  tears, 
pathos,  vituperation,  satire,  and  repartee  all 
at  his  command,  together  with  an  amazing 
knowledge  of  criminal  law,  he  was  born  to  com- 
mend himself  to  the  average  juryman.  Little 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  this  was  apparent,  however,  except  when  he 
was  in  action.  Just  now,  as  he  lounged  in  his 
revolving  chair,  his  limber  legs  crossed,  his 
thumbs  in  the  armholes  of  his  waistcoat,  and  his 
perfecto  moving  as  if  by  its  own  volition  along 
the  elastic  lines  of  his  mouth,  he  was  detached, 
impartial,  judicial,  with  that  manner  of  speaking 
which  the  French  describe  as  "from  high  to  low'* 
— "de  haul  en  bas" — the  "good  mixer,"  with  a 
sense  of  his  own  superiority. 

The  lack  of  the  human  element  was  to  Bob  the 
most  disconcerting  trait  in  the  lawyer's  frame  of 
mind.  To  him  the  case  was  a  case,  and  neither 
more  nor  less.  The  boy's  life,  so  precious  to 
himself,  was  of  no  more  account  to  Stenhouse 
than  that  of  a  private  soldier  to  his  commanding 
officer  on  the  day  when  a  position  must  be  rushed. 
Stenhouse  was  interested  in  the  professional 
advantage  he  himself  might  gain  from  the  out- 
come of  the  trial.  In  a  less  degree,  he  was 
interested  in  Teddy's  psychology  as  a  new  slant 
on  criminal  mentality  in  general.  But  the  re- 
sults as  they  affected  his  client's  fate  concerned 
him  not  at  all. 

"I'm  talking  to  you  frankly,"  he  went  on, 
"because  it's  the  only  way  we  can  handle  the 
business.  You're  making  yourself  responsible 
in  the  case,  and  so  I  must  tell  you  what  I 
think." 

"Oh,  of  course!" 

"I  quite  understand  your  connection  with  this 
young  fellow,  and  why  you're  taking  the  matter 

352 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

up,  but  I  must  treat  you  as  if  you  were  as  aloof 
from  it  in  sentiment  as  I  am  myself." 

"That's  exactly  what  I  want." 

"Well,  then,  the  boy's  in  a  bad  fix.  It's  a 
worse  fix  because  he  belongs  to  the  dangerous 
criminal  type  for  whom  you  can  never  get  a 
jury's  sympathy.  Roughly  speaking,  there  are 
two  classes  of  criminals — the  criminals  by  acci- 
dent and  the  criminals  born.  This  boy  is  a 
criminal  born." 

"Oh,  do  you  think  so?" 

"I  know  so.  Yes,  sir!  You  can't  have  as 
much  to  do  with  both  lots  as  I've  had  without 
learning  to  read  them  at  sight;  and  when  it 
comes  to  drawing  them  out — why,  he  hadn't  told 
me  a  half  of  his  story  before  I  could  see  he'd  had 
murder  on  the  brain  for  the  best  part  of  his  life." 

"I  shouldn't  have  thought  that." 

"No,  you  wouldn't.  Lot  of  it  subconscious — 
suppressed  desire,  Freud,  and  all  that.  But 
start  him  talking,  and  it's  'God!  I'd  have  shot 
that  fellow  if  I'd  had  a  gun!'  or  it's,  'If  I'd  had 
a  dose  of  poison,  they'd  never  have  got  me 
alive.'  Mind  ran  on  it.  Yes,  sir!  Always  think- 
ing of  doing  somebody  in — if  not  another  fellow, 
then  himself." 

"I  don't  think  he  knew  it." 

"Of  course  he  didn't  know  it.  Seemed 
natural  to  him.  Our  own  vices  always  do  seem 
natural  to  us.  If  you  put  it  up  to  him  now,  he'd 
say  he'd  never  had  a  thought  of  shooting  up 
anyone,  and  he  wouldn't  be  lying  out  of  it, 

353 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

either.  Way  it  seems  to  him.  Way  it  seems  to 
every  criminal  of  the  class.  But  to  judges  and 
-juries  it's  just  so  much  'bull,'  and  tells  against 
the  accused  in  the  end.  Sure  you  won't  have  a 
cigar  ? " 

Having  again  declined  the  cigar,  Bob  argued 
in  favor  of  Teddy,  but  Stenhouse  was  fixed  in 
his  convictions. 

"I'll  do  what  I  can  for  him,  of  course;  only, 
I'm  blocked  by  his  refusal  to  plead  guilty. 
Pleading  guilty  might — I  don't  say  it  would, 
but  it  might — incline  the  judge  to  mercy.  It 
would  get  him  off,  too,  with  the  second  degree, 
only  that,  when  his  own  story  shows  him  as 
guilty  as  hell,  he  keeps  pulling  the  innocent  stuff 
to  beat  a  jazz  band.  The  rascal  who  plumps 
with  his  confession  will  always  get  the  clemency, 
while  the  fellow  with  a  mouthful  of  innocence 
will  be  sent  to  the  chair." 

"  But  if  he  does  feel  that  he's  innocent — " 
"Sure  he  feels  that  he's  innocent!  That's  it! 
That's  what  I'm  talking  about — the  ingrained 
criminal's  lack  of  consciousness  that  his  kind  of 
crime  is  crime.  The  other  fellow's — yes;  but  his 
— why,  the  law  is  a  fool  to  be  made  that  way  and 
trip  a  good  fellow  up!  To  hear  this  young  shaver 
talk,  you'd  think  the  courts  should  be  manned 
by  pickpockets." 

"All  the  same,  he  was  in  a  tight  place — 
"What's  that  got  to  do  with  it?    If  we  didn't 
get  into  tight  places,  there'd  be  no  need  for  laws 
of  any  kind." 

354 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I  was  only  thinking  of  his  motive — " 
"His  motive  may  have  been  all  right.  I'll  not 
dispute  you  there,  because  you'll  find  that 
legally  there's  a  difference  between  motive  and 
intent.  His  motive  may  have  been  to  provide 
for  his  mother,  just  as  he  says.  Good!  No 
harm  in  that  whatever.  But  his  intent  was  to 
rob  a  bank  and  shoot  the  guy  that  came  out 
after  him.  The  court  won't  go  into  his  motives. 
It  '11  deal  only  with  his  intent,  and  with  what 
came  of  it." 

There  was  more  along  these  lines  which  sent 
Bob  away  with  some  questioning  as  to  himself. 
Being  of  a  law-respecting  nature,  he  was  anxious 
not  to  uphold  the  transgressor  to  anything  like 
a  danger  point.  And  he  ran  that  risk.  Having 
undertaken  to  help  Teddy  on  Jennie's  account, 
his  heart  had  gone  out  beyond  what  he  expected 
to  the  boy  himself.  It  was  the  first  time  he  had 
ever  been  in  contact  with  a  prisoner,  the  first  time 
he  had  ever  come  face  to  face  with  a  lone  in- 
dividual against  whom  all  the  organized  forces 
of  the  world  were  focused  in  condemnation. 
His  impulse  being  to  range  himself  on  the 
weaker  side,  he  had,  in  a  measure,  so  ranged 
himself.  He  had  told  Teddy  that  he  stood  by 
him,  and  would  continue  to  stand  by  him  through 
thick  and  thin.  But  was  he  right?  Had  he 
shown  the  proper  severity?  Hadn't  he  been 
sloppy  and  sentimental,  without  sufficiently  re- 
membering that  a  man  who  had  killed  another 
man  was  not  to  be  handled  as  a  pet  ? 

355 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

It  was  not  common  sense  to  treat  the  breaker 
of  laws  as  if  he  hadn't  broken  them  or  as  if  his 
punishment  had  made  him  a  sympathetic  figure. 
Too  facile  a  pity  might  easily  become  a  sin 
against  the  community's  best  standards,  and  by 
putting  himself  on  the  weaker  side  a  man  might 
find  himself  on  the  worse  one.  Even  the  fact 
that  the  wrongdoer  was  a  relative  ought  not  to 
blind  the  eyes  to  his  being  a  wrongdoer.  It  was 
his  duty  as  a  citizen,  Bob  argued,  to  support  the 
charter  of  the  Rights  of  Man  as  set  forth  in  the 
Old  Testament — thou  shalt  not  kill — thou  shalt 
not  steal — the  ideal  of  the  New  Testament, 
"Neither  was  there  among  them  any  that  lacked, 
for  they  had  all  things  common,"  never  having 
been  called  to  his  attention. 

As  to  Teddy's  being  a  criminal  born,  he  was 
not  sure.  Perhaps  he  was.  Such  "sports"  ap- 
peared even  from  the  most  respectable  stock. 
There  was  a  dark  tradition,  never  mentioned 
now  except  between  Edith  and  himself,  of  a 
Collingham — they  were  not  sure  of  the  relation- 
ship— who  had  died  in  jail  somewhere  in  the 
West.  Of  the  Follett  stock  Bob  knew  nothing. 
Jennie  was  the  other  half  of  himself;  but  such 
affinities,  he  was  sheepishly  inclined  to  feel, 
dated  from  other  worlds  and  other  planes  of 
existence,  though  finding  a  manifestation  in 
this  one. 

But  it  was  Jennie  who  gave  him  the  lead  he 
was  in  search  of. 

"  I  should  think  there  were  plenty  of  them  to 
356 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

attend  to  that,"  she  said,  when  he  had  expressed, 
as  delicately  as  he  could,  his  misgivings  as  to  his 
own  lack  of  rigor.  "Whatever  he  did,  and  how- 
ever bad  it  was,  they've  got  all  the  power  in  the 
world  to  punish  him,  and  they're  going  to  do  it. 
When  there's  just  one  person  on  earth  to  show 
him  a  little  pity,  I  shouldn't  think  it  could  be 
too  much."  She  added,  after  a  second  or  two  of 
silence:  "He  was  sorry  you  didn't  go  in  to  see 
him.  He  missed  you.  I — I  think  he's  going  to 
cling  to  you  just  like  a  drowning  man,  you  know, 
to  a  hand  that's  stretched  out  to  him  from  a 
boat.  Very  likely  he'll  have  to  drown;  but  so 
long  as  the  hand  is  there,  it's — it's  something." 

In  this  speech,  which  was  long  for  Jennie  and 
betokened  her  growing  authority,  there  were 
two  or  three  points  on  which  Bob  pondered  as 
he  drove  them  homeward  from  the  Brig.  Jennie 
sat  beside  him,  Lizzie  in  the  back  seat.  He 
took  the  longest  and  prettiest  ways  so  as  to  give 
them  something  like  an  outing. 

It  was  the  afternoon  of  the  day  on  which  he 
had  seen  Stenhouse,  and  in  the  interval  he  had 
been  thinking  out  a  program.  Whatever  the  re- 
strictions he  must  put  upon  himself  with  regard 
to  the  boy,  his  duty  to  protect  and  distract 
Jennie  and  her  family  was  clear.  Teddy  had 
also  given  him  to  understand  that,  more  than 
anything  done  for  himself,  this  would  contribute 
to  his  peace  of  mind.  Done  for  his  mother  and 
sisters,  it  would  be  done  for  him,  arid  the  doer 
could  be  sure  that  he  wasn't  loosening  the  foun- 
357 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

dations  of  society.  Even  where  there  was  a  born 
criminal  to  be  judged,  and  perhaps  put  out  of 
the  way,  something  was  gained  when  the  inno- 
cent could  be  saved  to  any  possible  degree  from 
suffering  with  the  guilty. 

In  this,  too,  he  was  not  without  an  eye  to 
Indiana  Avenue.  Though  he  had  no  experience 
of  suburban  life,  he  was  intuitive  enough  to  feel 
sure  that,  to  the  neighbors,  Jennie's  marriage 
had  a  "queer  look,"  and  the  more  so  since  she 
was  not  living  with  her  husband,  now  that  he  was 
back  from  South  America.  To  counteract  this, 
he  meant  to  show  himself  in  the  street  as  much 
as  possible,  parading  his  car  before  the  door. 
There  must  be  no  cheap  gossip  as  to  Jennie 
based  on  lack  of  his  devotion,  even  though  all 
arrangements  between  her  and  himself  were  no 
more  than  provisional. 

To  that  point,  then,  his  course  was  clear. 
He  could  not  console  the  mother,  whose  reason 
was  stricken  at  its  base,  nor  the  three  young 
girls  whose  lives  were  overshadowed  by  tragedy; 
but  he  could  divert  their  minds  from  dwelling 
too  much  on  calamity  by  bringing  in  a  new 
interest.  He  could  make  it  a  big  interest.  He 
could  enlarge  the  interest  in  proportion  to  their 
need;  and,  as  Jennie  spoke,  it  dawned  on  him 
that  they  themselves  began  to  foresee  that  their 
need  might  be  great  indeed.  "They've  got  all 
the  power  in  the  world  to  punish  him;  and 
they're  going  to  do  it."  "He's  going  to  cling  to 
you  like  a  drowning  man.  Very  likely  he'll  have 

358 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

to  drown."  Jennie  had  had  one  or  two  inter- 
views with  Stenhouse,  and  perhaps  had  inferred 
from  that  great  man's  talk  the  difficulties  of  his 
task. 

But  the  help  she  gave  Bob  was  in  her  response 
to  his  misgivings.  "When  there's  just  one  per- 
son on  earth  to  show  him  a  little  pity,  I  shouldn't 
think  it  could  be  too  much."  It  couldn't  be  too 
much — not  possibly.  The  worst  enemy  of  man- 
kind had  a  right  to  "a  little  pity,"  and  even 
Judas  Iscariot  had  received  it.  If  Teddy  didn't 
get  it  from  him,  Bob,  he  wouldn't  get  it  from 
anyone — his  mother  and  sisters  apart.  All 
civilized  men  were  lined  up  against  him,  and 
doubtless  could  not  be  lined  in  any  other  way. 
In  that  case,  punishment  was  assured,  and,  as 
Jennie  said,  there  were  plenty  of  people  to  take 
care  of  its  infliction.  He,  Bob  Collingham,  since 
he  stood  alone,  might  well  forget  the  heavy 
score  against  the  boy  in  "bucking  him  up"  to 
meet  what  lay  ahead  of  him. 

He  worked  this  out  before  driving  Jennie  and 
her  mother  to  their  door,  after  which  he  waited 
for  Gussie  and  Gladys  to  come  home  from  work 
to  take  them,  too,  for  an  airing.  Jennie  sat 
beside  him,  as  on  the  earlier  drive,  the  two 
younger  girls  in  the  seat  behind. 

To  both,  the  expedition  was  as  the  first  stage 
of  a  glorification  which  might  carry  them  up  to 
any  heights.  Taken  in  connection  with  what 
they  suffered  on  account  of  Teddy,  it  was  like 
drinking  an  unmingled  draught  of  the  very  bitter 
24  359 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

and  the  very  sweet.  Hardly  able  to  lift  up  their 
heads  from  shame,  they  nevertheless  felt  the  dis- 
tinction of  going  out  in  an  expensive  high-pow- 
ered car  with  a  gentleman  of  wealth  and  position, 
who  thus  publicly  proclaimed  himself  their 
relative. 

"This  '11  settle  Addie  Inglis  and  Samuella 
Weatherby,"  Gladys  whispered,  in  reference  to 
some  taunt  or  aspersion  which  Gussie  under- 
stood. "Say,  Gus,  he's  some  sport,  isn't  he? 
Jen  sure  did  cop  a  twenty-cylinder." 

But  Gussie  had  already  turned  over  her  new 
leaf.  From  the  corner  where  she  reclined  with 
the  grace  of  one  accustomed  from  birth  to  this 
style  of  conveyance,  she  arched  her  lovely  neck 
and  turned  her  lovely  head  just  enough  to  convey 
a  hint  of  reprimand. 

"Gladys  dear,  momma  wouldn't  like  you  to 
use  that  kind  of  language.  Remember  that  now 
we  must  carry  out  her  wishes  all  the  more  be- 
cause she  isn't  able  to  enforce  them.  Your 
companions  may  not  always  be  Hattie  Bel- 
weather  and  Sunshine  Bright,  and  so — " 

"Say,  Gus,  what's  struck  you?  Has  goin'  out 
in  a  swell  rig  like  this  gone  to  your  head?" 

"Yes,  dear;  perhaps  it  has.  And  if  you'll 
take  my  advice  you'll  let  it  go  to  yours." 

The  only  immediate  response  from  Gladys 
was  a  cocking  of  the  eye  and  a  "elk"  of  the 
tongue  against  the  cheek,  something  like  a  Zulu 
vowel;  but  Gussie  noticed  that  in  Palisade 
Park,  where  they  descended  from  the  car  to 

360 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

make  Bob's  acquaintance,  Gladys  reverted  to 
the  intonation  and  idiom  in  which  she  had  first 
picked  up  her  English. 

The  jaunt  tended  to  deepen  the  sensation 
which  had  been  creeping  over  the  girls  within  the 
past  few  days,  that  they  were  heroines  of  a 
dramatic  romance.  They  had  figured  in  the 
papers,  their  beauty,  personalities,  and  histories 
becoming  points  of  vital  national  concern.  One 
legend  made  them  the  scions  of  an  ancient  Eng- 
lish family  fallen  on  evil  days,  but  now  to  be 
revived  through  alliance  with  the  Collinghams, 
while  another  came  near  enough  to  the  truth  to 
embody  the  Scarborough  tradition  and  connect 
them  with  the  historic  house  in  Cambridge.  In 
no  case  was  there  any  waste  of  the  picturesque, 
the  detail  that  Jennie  had  been  an  artist's  model 
and  "the  most  beautiful  woman  in  America'* 
being  especially  underscored. 

It  was  only  little  by  little  that  Gussie  and 
Gladys  came  to  a  sense  of  this  importance,  thus 
finding  themselves  enabled  to  react  to  some 
small  degree  against  their  sense  of  disgrace. 
In  the  shop,  Gussie  had  heard  Corinne  whisper 
to  a  customer: 

"That  pretty  girl  over  there  is  the  sister  of 
Follett,  who  murdered  Flynn,  and  whose  sister 
made  that  romantic  marriage  with  the  banker." 

Though  she  glanced  up  from  the  feather  she 
was  twisting  only  through  the  tail  of  her  eye, 
Gussie  could  reckon  the  excitement  caused  by 
this  announcement.  When  it  had  been  made  a 

361 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

second  time,  and  a  third,  as  new  customers 
came  in,  she  saw  herself  an  asset  to  the  shop. 
Stared  at,  wondered  at,  discussed,  and  ap- 
praised, she  began  to  feel  as  princesses  and 
actresses  when  recognized  in  streets. 

Similarly,  Hattie  Belweather  had  run  to 
Gladys  to  report  what  Miss  Flossie  Grimm  had 
said  over  the  counter,  in  the  intervals  of  dis- 
playing stockings. 

"See  that  little  red-headed,  snub-nosed  thing 
over  there?  That's  the  Follett  child,  sister  to 
the  guy  that  shot  the  detective  and  the  girl 
that  married  the  banker  sport.  Some  hummer  he 
must  be.  Jennie,  the  married  one's  name  is. 
They  say  she's  had  an  offer  of  a  hundred  plunks 
a  week  to  go  into  vawdeville.  Fast  color?  Oh, 
my,  yes!  We  don't  carry  any  other  kind." 

Thus  Gladys  began  to  find  it  difficult  to  discern 
between  notoriety  and  eminence,  moving  among 
the  other  cash  girls  as  a  queen  incognita  among 
ordinary  mortals. 

Most  of  this  publicity  was  over  by  the  time 
Bob  reached  New  York,  though  the  echoes  still 
rumbled  through  the  press.  His  own  arrival 
reawakened  some  of  it,  offering  opportunities 
that  were  never  ignored  of  drawing  dramatic  con- 
trasts. He  was  represented  as  having  been 
"born  in  the  purple,"  and  stooping  to  a  "maiden 
of  low  degree."  Low  degree  was  poetically  fused 
with  the  occupation  of  a  model,  and  by  one 
publication  the  statement  was  thrown  in,  with- 
out comment,  and  as  it  were  accidentally,  that 

362 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

the  present  Mrs.  Robert  Bradley  Collingham, 
Junior,  of  Marillo  Park,  had  been  greatly  ad- 
mired by  appreciative  connoisseurs  as  the  figure 
in  Hubert  Wray's  already  famous  picture,  "Life 
and  Death."  Hubert  Wray  was  even  credited 
with  "discovering"  this  beauty  when  she  was 
starving  in  the  slums. 

Except  for  the  detail  of  Wray's  picture,  the 
publicity  was  something  of  a  relief  to  Bob,  since 
it  left  him  nothing  to  explain.  The  truth  in 
these  many  reports  being  tolerably  easy  to  dis- 
engage, his  friends  and  acquaintances  knew  of 
his  position,  and,  in  view  of  its  circumstances, 
they  respected  it.  He  went  to  the  bank;  he 
went  to  his  club;  he  passed  the  time  of  day  with 
such  neighbors  as  remained  at  Marillo  Park, 
finding  it  the  easier  to  come  and  go  because 
everyone  knew  what  had  happened. 

From  almost  the  first  day  he  fell  into  a  rou- 
tine— the  bank,  Stenhouse,  Teddy,  Indiana 
Avenue.  Though  he  was  not  yet  working  at  the 
bank,  he  felt  it  wise  to  show  himself  daily  on  the 
premises,  in  order  to  establish  the  fact  that  his~ 
relations  with  his  family  were  unchanged. 
Stenhouse  he  didn't  visit  every  day,  but  only 
when  there  were  matters  connected  with  the 
case  to  talk  over.  He  saw  Teddy  as  often  as  the 
Brig  regulations  would  allow,  growing  more  and 
more  touched  by  the  eagerness  with  which  the 
boy  welcomed  him.  In  Indiana  Avenue  he  was 
assiduous.  Whatever  the  hints  flung  out  by 
Addie  Inglis  and  Samuella  Weatherby,  they 

363 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

received  contradiction  as  far  as  that  was  possible 
from  obvious  devotion. 

As  for  his  personal  relations  with  Jennie,  they 
changed  little  from  the  modus  Vivendi  agreed 
upon.  That  she  was  growing  more  and  more 
grateful  was  evident,  but  gratitude  wasn't  what 
he  wanted.  What  he  wanted  he  himself  didn't 
know,  and,  in  a  measure,  he  didn't  care.  Till  she 
got  what  she  wanted,  he  could  never  be  wholly 
satisfied;  and  if  she  wanted  Wray  .  .  . 

But  at  this  point  his  reasoning  faculties  failed 
him.  If  she  wanted  Wray  and  if  Wray  wanted 
her,  there  would,  of  course,  be  but  one  thing  for 
him  to  do.  It  was  that  one  thing  itself  which 
remained  elusive  or  obscure,  dodging,  disturbing, 
and  defying  him.  He  could  find  a  means  to  give 
Jennie  her  freedom,  or  he  could  take  her  by  brute 
force,  or,  in  certain  circumstances,  he  could 
dismiss  her  as  not  worthy  of  his  love.  The 
trouble  was  that  he  couldn't  see  himself  doing 
any  of  the  three;  and  yet  if  what  seemed  to  be 
true  was  true,  he  couldn't  see  himself  as  doing 
the  other  thing. 

The  modus  vivendi,  like  all  other  arrangements 
of  its  kind,  was  therefore  safe  and  convenient. 
It  settled  nothing;  but  it  was  what  the  term  im- 
plied, a  way  of  living.  It  was  not  an  ideal  way 
of  living,  or  a  way  that  shielded  anyone  from 
comment;  but  it  was  a  way. 

As  for  comment,  it  reached  Bob  only  indirectly, 
and  not  oftener  than  every  now  and  then. 
Perhaps  it  came  in  as  pointed  a  form  as  it  ever 

364 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

assumed  for  him  in  a  seemingly  chance  remark 
from  the  chauffeur's  wife,  Mrs.  Gull.  It  was 
not  a  chance  remark,  for  the  neat,  pretty,  thin- 
lipped,  pinched-face  Englishwoman  who  had 
passed  all  her  life  "in  service"  didn't  make  ill- 
considered  observations. 

"I  suppose  we  shall  see  the  young  lady  down, 
sir,  some  day  soon?" 

"Yes,  some  day  soon,"  Bob  replied,  cau- 
tiously, getting  ready  in  the  hall  to  go  to  town. 

"To  remain?" 

It  was  all  summed  up  in  those  three  syllables 
— all  the  gossip  on  the  Collingham  estate,  and 
on  all  the  estates  at  Marillo,  not  to  go  farther 
afield. 

"Not  to  remain  just  yet,"  Bob  answered, 
judiciously.  "Mrs.  Follett  isn't  well,  and  Mrs. 
Collingham  has  two  younger  sisters  whom  she 
has  to  take  care  of." 

That  this  explanation  was  not  adequate  he 
knew;  and  yet  it  was  an  explanation.  "It 
certainly  do  seem  queer,"  Mrs.  Gull  observed  to 
the  gardener  and  the  gardener's  wife,  in  a  com- 
pany that  included  Gull;  and  Gull,  who  was 
from  Somersetshire,  replied,  "It  most  zure  and 
zertainly  do." 

But  on  the  Sunday  afternoon  two  weeks  after 
Bob's  return  "the  young  lady"  paid  her  visit  to 
Collingham  Lodge,  accompanied  by  her  mother 
and  two  sisters. 

The  journey  was  made  in  what  Gladys  charac- 
terized as  "style,"  the  style  being  mainly  supplied 

365 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

by  Gull  in  his  sedate  chauffeur's  uniform.  But 
the  fact  that  he  drove  the  car  left  Bob  free  to  sit 
with  his  guests  in  the  tonneau.  He  put  Jennie, 
as  hostess  and  mistress  of  the  car,  in  the  right- 
hand  corner,  Mrs.  Follett  in  the  left  one,  and 
Gussie  in  the  middle.  He  and  Gladys  occupied 
the  adjustable  seats  behind  the  chauffeur.  At 
sight  of  the  light  linen  rug  with  the  Collingham 
initials  in  crimson  applique,  Gussie  and  Gladys 
exchanged  appreciative  glances,  and  they  both 
searched  the  neighboring  piazzas  for  a  glimpse  of 
Addie  Inglis  or  Samuella  Weatherby. 

Acquainted  now  with  the  fact  that  Jennie  had 
viewed  the  celestial  country  whither  they  were 
traveling,  and  with  her  descriptions  of  the 
wonders  she  had  seen  almost  learned  by  rote, 
the  girls  came  near  to  forgetting  that  Teddy  was 
in  a  cell.  But  his  mother  didn't  forget  it.  Silent, 
austere,  incapable  of  pleasure,  and  waiting  only 
the  moment  of  the  boy's  release  and  her  own, 
her  eyes  roamed  the  parched  September  landscape 
and  saw  none  of  it.  She  did  not  appear  unhappy 
— only  removed  into  a  world  of  her  own,  a  world 
of  long,  long  thoughts. 

No  one  said  much.  There  was  not  much  to 
say  and  a  great  deal  to  think  about.  Even  the 
house,  the  terraces,  the  gardens  called  forth  no 
more  than  "Ohs!"  and  "Ahs!"  of  approval. 
Gladys  declared  that  she  felt  herself  wandering 
through  the  castle  scenes  in  "The  Silver  Queen," 
the  latest  screen  masterpiece,  but  no  one  else 
descended  to  such  comparisons. 

366 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"It's  like  heaven,"  Gussie  murmured  timidly, 
to  Bob,  as  they  strolled  between  hedges  of 
dahlias. 

"Oh  no,  it  isn't!"  he  laughed.  "Three  or 
four  places  at  Marillo  are  much  finer  than  this." 

Subdued  by  sheer  ecstasy,  they  assembled  on 
the  flagged  terrace,  where  Mrs.  Gull  brought  out 
tea.  Bob  was  pleased  at  Jennie's  bearing  toward 
the  chauffeur's  wife — friendly  with  just  the  right 
touch  of  dignity. 

"Mr.  Collingham  tells  me  you're  English. 
We're  almost  English  ourselves,  since  we  were 
born  in  Canada.  I've  never  been  in  England,  but 
I  should  so  love  to  go,  though  they  say  it's  quite 
different  since  the  war." 

There  was  no  more  to  it  than  that,  but  Mrs. 
Gull  reported  to  her  husband:  "As  much  a 
lady  as  any  I've  ever  served  under — and  I  do 
know  a  lady  when  I  see  her.  Miss  Edith's  a 
lady,  too,  but  not  a  patch  on  this  one.  She  may 
have  been  just  as  bad  as  they  say  she  was,  but 
you'd  never  believe  it  to  look  at  her,  and  the 
sisters  be'ave  as  pretty  as  pretty.  Oh  dear! 
And  they  with  a  murderer  for  a  brother!  It  do 
seem  queer,  now  don't  it?" 

To  which  Gull  replied  in  his  usual  antiphon, 
"It  most  zure  and  zertainly  do." 

The  jarring  chord  in  this  harmony  came  from 
Lizzie,  while  Bob  was  in  search  of  Gull  to  bid 
him  bring  round  the  car.  Lizzie  stood  looking 
down  the  two  flowered  terraces,  where  in  honor 
of  the  visitors  the  fountains  had  been  turned  on. 

367 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

/ 

"I  understand  now  why  they  couldn't  afford 
to  pay  your  father  his  forty-five  a  week.  It  must 
cost  a  great  deal  of  money  to  keep  this  establish- 
ment going." 

"Oh,  momma,"  Gussie  pleaded,  " don't  begin 
to  hang  crape  just  when  we're  able  to  enjoy  our- 
selves a  little." 

Lizzie  turned  on  her  daughter  her  rare  and 
almost  forgotten  smile. 

"Very  well,  dear;  enjoy  yourself.  Only  a 
world  in  which  enjoyment  must  be  bought  at 
such  a  price  is  not  a  fit  world  for  human  beings 
to  live  in." 

Gladys  crept  up,  snuggling  against  her  mother's 
shoulder. 

"Yes,  momma  darling;  but  you  won't  say 
that  any  more  till  we  get  home,  now  will  you? 
It  might  hurt  poor  Bob's  feelings  if  you  did,  and 
you  can't  say  that  he's  ever  done  us  any  harm." 


CHAPTER  XXV 

ON  the  day  after  the  visit  to  Collingham 
Lodge,  Bob  left  for  the  camp  in  the 
Adirondacks.  As  yet  he  had  no  knowledge  of 
the  family's  attitude  toward  him  more  exact 
than  he  could  infer.  He  had  written  to  them  all 
si/ice  his  return,  but  their  replies,  even  Edith's, 
had  been  noncommittal.  He  guessed  that  they 
had  decided  together  not  to  express  themselves 
fully  till  they  came  face  to  face  with  him. 

Even  then,  the  approach  to  his  own  affairs  was 
indirect.  An  affectionate  family  reunion,  based 
seemingly  on  the  ground  that  nothing  had  hap- 
pened when  so  much  had,  blocked  the  openings 
for  bringing  up  the  subjects  he  had  most  at 
heart.  During  the  early  part  of  that  first  evening 
at  Sugar  Maple  Point  he  couldn't  get  anyone 
alone.  Not  till  nearly  bedtime  did  he  himself 
offer  a  lead  by  strolling  out  into  the  moonlight 
in  the  hope  that  one  of  the  three  would  follow 
him. 

It  was  full  moonlight,  turning  Sugar  Maple 
Lake  into  a  sheet  of  silver  and  gold  laid  at  the 
base  of  a  velvety  silhouette  of  mountains.  The 
magic  of  stillness,  the  tang  of  the  forest,  the  re- 
pose of  the  spirit  from  the  girding  and  striving 
of  the  world — these  lovelinesses  came  to  Bob 

369 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Collingham  with  a  peace  such  as  they  always 
brought,  but  which  to-night  couldn't  find  a 
resting  place.  It  couldn't  find  a  resting  place 
because  in  this  tranquil  woodland  more  than 
anywhere  else  he  found  himself  wishing  that 
Teddy  Follett  wasn't  in  a  cell. 

Sugar  Maple  Lake  is  small  for  the  Adirondacks, 
being  no  more  than  three  miles  long  and  a  mile 
and  a  half  in  width.  All  its  shores  are  owned  by 
rich  men,  mostly  from  New  York,  who  can  keep 
themselves  secluded.  In  seclusion  they  are 
able  to  combine  rusticity  with  the  amenities  of 
life,  in  a  wealthy,  modern,  American  version  of 
Marie  Antoinette's  humble  village  at  Versailles. 
At  a  stranger's  first  glance,  the  "camps"  are 
but  lumbermen's  log  cabins  on  a  larger  scale; 
but  when  you  come  to  the  conveniences  and 
luxuries  of  living,  they  differ  little  from  Marillo 
Park. 

Reaching  the  thin  line  of  maples  and  pines 
fringing  the  edge  of  the  lake,  Bob  turned  to  see 
if  he  was  followed.  At  first  there  was  no  one. 
The  light  from  the  windows  and  doors  made  a 
golden  splotch  on  the  greenish  silvery  black  of 
the  sloping  lawn,  but  no  figure  appeared  in  the 
glow.  Coming  to  the  conclusion  that  this,  too, 
was  "a  put-up  job,"  he  was  strolling  back  again 
when  his  mother,  cloaked  against  the  night  air, 
stole  out  and  called  his  name  softly. 

On  reaching  him  she  took  his  arm,  and  to- 
gether they  picked  their  way  along  a  graveled 
path  leading  toward  the  Point. 

370 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I'm  so  glad  you've  come,"  she  said,  instantly. 
"I've  been  having  such  a  terrible  time  with  your 
father.  You  know  how  he  is — so  stern — so 
relentless — " 

"He's  been  corking  to  me." 

"You  mean  the  cablegram  he  sent  you  to  Rio? 
Oh,  well,  I  made  him  do  that.  It's  all  over  now, 
dear,  and  you  mustn't  worry;  but  at  first — that 
night  when  we  heard  that  the  Follett  boy  had 
got  into  trouble  and  I  had  to  tell  your  father  of 
your  marriage — well,  I  don't  want  to  make  things 
out  worse  than  they  are,  so  I  sha'n't  tell  you  what 
he  said;  but  I  did  manage  him.  I  soothed  him 
and  told  him  how  he  ought  to  take  it  and  what 
he  ought  to  do — with  the  result  that  you  got  that 
message.  You  mustn't  think  it  was  easy,  dear — " 

"You've  been  a  brick,  old  lady!" 

"I'm  your  mother,  Bob.  It's  all  summed  up 
in  that.  Whatever  makes  for  my  children's 
happiness  makes  for  mine.  Your  father  is  not  a 
Woman,  and  that's  the  difference  between  us. 
And  now  I've  had  all  this  trouble  with  him  over 
Edith's  engagement;  but  he's  given  in  at  last." 

Bob  sprang  away  from  her. 

"Edith  engaged?    Who  to?    Not  to  Ayling?" 

She  took  his  arm  again,  continuing  toward  the 
Point. 

"Yes,  to  Ernest.  He  was  so  opposed  to  it. 
But  I've  battled  for  my  child's  heart,  Bob,  and 
I've  won  out.  Your  father  is  giving  her  ten 
thousand  a  year.  It  isn't  much,  but  they  ought 
to  be  able  to  manage.  We  didn't  write  you, 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

partly  because  it  was  only  settled  last  week,  and 
it  was  easier  to  wait  and  tell  you." 

"But  I  thought  you  didn't  like  the  match 
yourself,  old  girl." 

"Oh,  me!  I  have  to  turn  myself  every  way  at 
once.  I've  no  wishes  of  my  own.  To  reconcile 
my  children  to  their  father  and  their  father  to 
my  children  is  all  I  live  and  work  for." 

Coming  to  the  little  rustic  gazebo  perched  on 
the  tip  of  the  Point,  they  entered  and  sat  down. 
There  being  nothing  to  obtrude  itself  here  on 
lake  and  moon  and  mountain,  it  was  as  if  they 
had  left  human  crudities  behind.  In  the  windless 
air,  the  fragrance  of  Bob's  cigarette  mingled 
with  the  aromatic  pungency  of  millions  and 
millions  of  growing  things. 

"There  was  simply  nothing  else  to  be  done," 
Junia  resumed.  "There  was  Edith  eating  her 
heart  out  and  stubborn  as  a  mule — and  with  the 
mess  you've  made  of  things — not  that  you  could 
foresee — or  know  the  sort  of  people  you  were 
getting  in  among — " 

It  was  the  opening  he  had  been  looking  for, 
and  he  knew  that,  whatever  the  outcome,  he  must 
use  it. 

"Exactly  what  do  you  mean  by  that,  mother?" 

She  seemed  confused. 

"I  don't  suppose  I  mean  anything — except 
what's  obvious." 

Not  to  press  the  point  at  once,  he  said,  "You 
saw  Jennie." 

"Yes;  I  sent  for  her." 
372 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

"What  did  you  think  of  her?" 

"Oh,  what  anyone  would  think.  She's  charm- 
ing— to  look  at." 

"Only  to  look  at?" 

"Her  manner  is  charming,  too.  Of  course! 
I — I  don't  quite  know  what  you  want  me  to 
say." 

"How  much  did  she  tell  you  that  afternoon?" 

She  looked  at  him  through  the  moonlight. 

"Hasn't  she  told  you?" 

"She's  told  me  nothing — except  that  you 
were  lovely." 

"Then,  Bob  dear,  I'm  afraid  I  can't  add  any- 
thing. You  see,  they  were  her  secrets — " 

"Oh!    Then  she  told  you  secrets!" 

"Why,  of  course!    What  did  you  think?" 

"Any  other  secret  besides  that  she  and  I  had 
been  married?" 

"  Bob  darling,  I  don't  think  it's  fair  to  put  me 
on  the  witness  stand.  She's  your  wife — and  be- 
cause she's  your  wife  I  accept  her.  What  I 
know  is  buried  here" — she  smote  her  chest — 
"and  if  for  your  sake  and  hers  I  try  to  forget  it 
I  think  you  might  let  me." 

For  a  few  minutes  he  smoked  in  a  silence 
broken  only  by  the  maniac  cry  of  a  loon  in  the 
distance. 

"Did  it  occur  to  you,"  he  asked  at  last,  "that 
she  was  a  very  simple  girl  who  could  easily  be- 
come entangled  in  her  talk  when  she  tried  to 
explain  things  to  a  woman  of  the  world?" 

"No;  because  the  things  said  were  very  simple 
373 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

— just  statements  of  fact  as  to  which  there  could 
be  no  misunderstanding." 

"Had  the  statements  of  fact  anything" — he 
moistened  his  dry  lips — "anything  to  do  with — 
with  Hubert?" 

"Some  of  them.  But  there!"  She  caught 
herself  up.  "You're  not  going  to  make  me  tell 
you  things.  I'm  your  mother,  and  if  I  intervene 
at  all,  it  must  be  in  the  way  of  helping  you  to 
come  together  and  not  of  putting  you  apart." 
She  rose,  drawing  her  cloak  about  her.  "I  think 
I  must  go  in,  dear.  I'm  beginning  to  feel  the 
damp." 

He,  too,  rose,  sitting  down  again  sidewise  on 
the  rustic  rail  of  the  summerhouse. 

"Wait  a  minute,  mother.  I  want  to  ask  you 
something.  When  I  was  at  Marillo  I  wandered 
into  your  room  one  day  and  saw  a  picture." 

"A  picture?" 

"Yes;  a  picture;  and  I — I  wondered  how  it — 
it  happened  to  come  there." 

She  bent  a  little  toward  him,  drawing  her 
cloak  more  closely  about  her.  If  it  was  acting  it 
was  well  done. 

"It — it  couldn't  have  been — " 

He  chucked  the  butt  of  his  cigarette  into  the 
lake. 

"Yes,  I  guess  it  was.  It  had  an  inscription  on 
it — 'Life  and  Death,  by  Hubert  Wray.": 

"Oh,  my  God!  Where  did  you  say  you  saw  it, 
Bob?" 

"In  your  bedroom,  against  the  wall.  I 
374 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

thought  it  might  be  a  portrait  you'd  had  done, 
and  so  lifted — " 

"And  I  told  them  to  put  it  out  of  sight.  You 
see,  Hubert  didn't  send  it  till  after  we'd  left  the 
house — fust  before  he  went  to  California.  I'd 
gr  ^Jers  that  it  was  to  be  locked  up  in  an 
empty  closet  in  my  wardrobe  room.  Oh,  Bob 
darling,  I  don't  know  what  you're  going  to  think 
of  me." 

"Oh,  you're  all  right,  mother.  It  wasn't  you. 
I — I  only  wondered  how  you'd  come  by  the 
thing  at  all." 

She  made  an  obvious  effort  at  controlling 
emotion. 

"Why,  Bob,  it  was  this  way.  After — after 
what  Jennie  told  me  that  day  I — I  naturally 
thought  a  good  deal  about  Hubert — and — and 
their  relations  to  each  other — " 

"She  talked  about  them,  did  she?" 

"Well,  you  see,  in  a  way  she  had  to.  She  was 
let  in  for  it,  poor  thing.  I  can't  tell  you  every- 
thing without  giving  you  the  whole  story — and 
it's  her  story,  as  I've  said  before.  I've  no  right 
to  betray  her,  and  least  of  all  to  you." 

"All  right.    Goon." 

"So  when  I'd  heard  that  Hubert  had  a  new 
picture  at  the  Kahler  Gallery — and  everyone  was 
talking  about  it — and  I  knew  from  the  things  they 
said  what — what  sort  of  a  picture  it  was — " 

"Yes,  yes;    I  understand." 

"Well,  then,  I — I  went  and  saw  it;  and  to — 
to  get  it  out  of  sight  I  bought  it  on  the  spot. 
25  375 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

I  didn't  want  it  to  be  still  on  exhibition  when  you 
came  back;  and  I  hoped  that  people  would  for- 
get it.  I  should  have  burned  it  at  once,  only 
that  Hubert  delayed  sending  it,  and — well,  you 
>ee  how  it  happened.  But  even  so,  Bob  dear, 
you  knew  you  were  marrying  a  model — 

"Oh  yes;   it  isn't  that — not  altogether." 

She  laid  her  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"What  is  it,  Bob  darling?  Can't  you  tell  me? 
I'm  your  mother,  dear — " 

But  he  moved  away  from  her  touch,  as  if 
unable  to  bear  sympathy. 

"I  can't  tell  you  yet,  old  lady.  I  must  see  my 
own  way  first.  I've  got  to  get  through  this 
business  about  the  boy  before  I  take  any  step 
whatever.  She  knows  pretty  well  that  I  know 
that — that  she  and  Hubert  are  in  love  with — 
with  each  other — " 

"Oh,  but  Hubert  is  not  in  love  with  her.  He 
told  me  so." 

"Not  in  love  with  her?"  he  cried,  sharply. 
"Why  isn't  he?" 

"He  said — oh,  Bob,  I  can't  talk  about  it. 
You'll—" 

"You've  got  to  talk  about  it,  mother.  I  can't 
half  know.  I  must  know!  If  he  wasn't  in  love 
with  her,  what  did  he  mean  by  making  her 
think—" 

"I  don't  believe  he  did  make  her  think.  He 
hinted  that — that  there'd  been  something  be- 
tween them,  but  that — that  with  girls  of  that 
sort  you — you  couldn't  call  it  love." 

376 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Why  couldn't  you?" 

"Because — no,  I  won't,  Bob!  I'm  your 
mother.  I  must  make  things  easier  for  you,  and 
not  harder,  and  so — " 

"It  will  make  things  easiest  for  me  to  know 
the  truth.  So  go  on!  Out  with  it!  Tell  me  just 
what  he  said." 

She  wrung  her  hands  beneath  the  cloak. 

"He  said  it — it  couldn't  be  love — with  a  girl 
whom — whom  anyone  could— 

He  sprang  from  the  rail,  holding  up  his  hand. 

"Wait  a  minute,  mother!  Jennie's  my  wife. 
I'm  her  husband.  I  believe  in  her." 

With  her  speed  in  trimming  her  sails  to  the 
wind,  Junia  caught  the  direction. 

"I  don't  want  you  not  to  believe  in  her,  Bob.  I 
didn't  want  to  say  any  of  the  things  that — that 
you've  been  dragging  out  of  me.  You  know 
that." 

"Yes,  I  know  that,  old  lady,  and  I'm  grate- 
ful. I  had  to  drag  them  out  and  know  the  worst 
that  could  be  said,  so  as  to  contradict  it  in — in 
my  heart." 

"Oh,  in  your  heart!" 

"Yes,  in  my  heart.  It's  where  I'm  strongest 
— just  as  it's  where  dad  is  strongest,  too,  if  he'd 
only  been  true  to  himself.  But  that's  a  side 
issue.  What  I  want  to  say  now — and  what  I'd 
like  you  to  understand — is  that  I  know  that 
Jennie  is  good  and  pure  and  true  and  one  of  the 
sweetest  and  loveliest  spirits  God  ever  made.  I 
know  it!" 

377 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Junia  couldn't  be  as  feminine  as  she  was 
without  gazing  in  awe  and  admiration  at  the 
tall,  upright  figure,  which  seemed  taller  and  more 
upright  for  the  moonlight. 

"  Would  you  know  it — mind  you,  I'm  only 
putting  it  this  way — would  you  know  it — with 
her  own  evidence  to  the  contrary?" 

"Yes,  mother;  I  should  know  it — with  her  own 
evidence  to  the  contrary." 

She  shivered  and  turned  away  from  him. 

"I  must  really  go  in  now,  dear.  I'm  so  afraid 
of  catching  cold.  But — but  good  night!" 

Having  kissed  him,  she  went  down  the  steps, 
turning  once  more  to  look  back  at  him.  Sil- 
houetted against  the  oblong  of  light  between  two 
rough  pilasters,  he  was  mechanically  taking  out 
his  case  and  selecting  a  cigarette. 

"You're  splendid,  Bob,"  she  said,  with  a  ring 
of  sincerity  that  startled  him.  "That's  the  way 
to  love  a  woman.  If  there  were  only  more  men 
like  you !  And — I  will  say  it,  in  spite  of  the  things 
you've  just  made  me  confess — there  must  be 
something  very,  very  good  in  a  girl  to — to  call 
forth  that  kind  of  love." 

But  Jennie  herself  made  that  kind  of  love  more 
difficult.  On  returning  to  town  Bob  found  her 
changed.  During  all  the  weeks  of  the  modus 
Vivendi  she  had  been  gentle,  submissive,  grateful, 
accepting  his  terms  in  the  provisional  spirit  in 
which  she  understood  them,  and  carrying  them 
out.  When  Teddy's  affairs  were  settled — and 
they  never  defined  what  they  meant  by  that — 

378 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

she  knew  they  were  to  have  a  reckoning;  but 
the  reckoning  was  to  be  postponed  till  then. 

And  now,  all  at  once,  she  seemed  disposed  to 
force  it  on.  His  visit  to  his  family  had  frightened 
her.  It  frightened  her  the  more  in  that  he  said 
so  little  about  it.  He,  too,  was  changed.  He 
was  silent,  pensive.  He  watched  her  more  and 
talked  to  her  less;  but  when  he  watched  her  his 
eyes,  so  she  said  to  herself,  had  a  queer  kind  of 
sorrow  in  them.  She  didn't  wonder  at  that. 
Anyone's  eyes  would  have  had  sorrow  in  them — 
anyone  who  was  seeing  Teddy  nearly  every  day 
and  filling  him  up  with  fortitude.  If  it  had  not 
been  for  Teddy's  sake  she  would  have  done  her 
best  to  get  Bob  "out  of  it"  long  ago. 

Her  fear  now  was  of  not  being  able  to  make 
this  attempt  of  her  own  accord.  In  other  words, 
she  shrank  from  being  found  out  before  confessing 
of  her  own  free  will.  Twenty  words  from  Mrs. 
Collingham  to  her  son  would  rob  her,  Jennie,  of 
such  poor  shreds  of  good  intention  as  she  still 
possessed. 

The  trouble  was,  first,  the  lack  of  opportunity, 
and  then,  the  waiting  for  the  right  emotional  mo- 
ment. It  was  not  a  thing  you  could  spring  at 
any  chance  hour  of  the  day.  Something  must 
lead  up  to  it  and  make  it  natural. 

But  a  week  after  his  return  from  Sugar  Maple 
Point,  the  occasion  seemed  to  present  itself.  It 
was  one  of  those  evenings  in  late  September  when 
indoors  was  too  stifling.  In  pursuance  of  his 
plans  for  distracting  the  family,  which  meant  so 

379 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

much  to  Teddy,  Bob  had  motored  the  mother 
and  daughters  to  a  small  country  restaurant, 
where  they  had  had  supper,  and  had  brought 
them  home  again.  Lizzie  and  the  two  girls  hav- 
ing said  good  night,  Jennie  was  about  to  do  the 
same,  but  he  held  her  by  the  hand. 

"Don't  go  in.    Let's  walk  a  bit." 

"So  it's  come,"  Jennie  thought.  "I  must  do 
it  before  we  get  home." 

Even  so  she  put  it  off.  He,  too,  put  off  what- 
ever in  himself  was  burning  to  find  words.  They 
said  as  little  35  they  could  without  being  altogether 
silent,  and  that  little  was  mere  commonplace. 

"Wonderful  night,  isn't  it?" 

"Yes;  and  I  think  we're  going  to  have  a 
breeze.  It  isn't  so  hot  as  an  hour  ago." 

"Anyhow,  the  hot  weather  must  be  nearly 
over.  It  will  be  October  in  a  day  or  two." 

"But  we  often  have  very  hot  days  in  October. 
I  remember  that  last  year — " 

So  they  came  to  Palisade  Walk  and  turned 
into  it.  Though  the  moon  was  not  yet  up,  the 
effulgence  of  its  approach  made  a  halo  above  the 
city.  Manhattan  was  a  line  of  constellations 
the  riverway  a  gulf  of  darkness  in  which  were 
scattered  stars.  Along  the  parapet,  shadowy 
couples,  mostly  lovers,  formed  little  ghostly 
groups,  while  here  and  there  was  the  point  of 
light  of  a  cigarette  or  cigar. 

They  came  to  a  halt,  Jennie  leaning  against 
one  of  the  dragon's  teeth,  looking  over  at  the 
city,  Bob  standing  a  little  back  from  her. 

380 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I've  never  been  here  at  night  before,"  he 
said.  "I'd  no  idea  it  was  so  beautiful." 

"We  don't  come  very  often  ourselves.  We  live 
so  near  that  I  suppose  we're  used  to  it." 

"We  had  some  wonderful  evenings  at  Sugar 
Maple  Point ;  but  that  was  another  kind  of  thing." 

She  assembled  her  forces  without  turning  to 
look  at  him  or  making  any  change  in  her  tone. 

"I  suppose  you  talked  to  your  mother  while 
you  were  up  there?" 

"Oh,  of  course!" 

"About  me?" 

Divining  what  was  coming,  he  was  on  his 
guard.  "You  were  mentioned — naturally." 

"And  she  told  you  things?" 

"Some  things." 

"Some  things  about  me  that — that  were  new 
to  you?" 

"Yes;  some  things  about  you  that  were  new 
to  me." 

"Did  she  tell  you — everything?" 

"I'm  not  in  a  position  to  say  that  it  was  every- 
thing; but — but  I  rather  think  it  was.  What 
of  it?" 

"Oh — only,  that — that  I'm  as  bad  as  she  said 
I  was.  I — I  wanted  you  to  know  that  it  was 
true." 

The  long  stillness  was  broken  only  by  a  moan 
like  that  of  a  wounded  monster  from  a  ferryboat 
far  away. 

"Why  do  you  want  me  to  know  that?"  he 
asked,  at  length. 

381 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

"So  that  you'll  see  now  that  when — when 
everything  is  over  about  Teddy — you'll  be — 
you'll  be  free/' 

"But  suppose  I  don't  want  to  be  free?" 

"  But  I  want  it  for  you." 

"Why?" 

"Oh,  it's  very  simple."  She  turned,  leaning 
with  her  back  to  the  rock.  "It's  just  this,  Bob— 
I'm  not  fit  to  be  your  wife.  I  never  was  fit.  I 
never  shall  be  fit.  There  it  is  in  a  nutshell.  It 
isn't  education  and  social  things  that  I'm  talking 
about.  I'm — I'm  too — I  don't  know  how  to  put 
it — but  you're  so  big — " 

"We'll  drop  all  that,  Jennie,  if  you.  don't 
mind,  because  it  isn't  a  case  of  fitness  on  either 
your  part  or  mine;  it's  one  of  love." 

She  hung  her  head. 

"Oh,  love!  I — I  don't  think  I — I  know  what 
it  is." 

"I'm  sure  you  don't.  It's  what  I've  told  you. 
I  want  to  show  you  what  it's  like.  Do  you  know 
what  I  said  to  the  old  lady  when  she  got  off 
those  things?  She  didn't  want  to  do  it,  mind 
you,"  he  hastened  to  explain.  "She  wanted  to 
keep  your  secrets  and  be  true  to  you — but  I 
dragged  them  out  of  her.  And  do  you  know 
what  I  said  to  her?  Well,  I'm  going  to  re- 
peat it  to  you  now.  I  said  I  wouldn't  believe 
anything  against  you — not  even  on  your  own 
evidence." 

"Is  that  love,  Bob — or  is  it  just  being  stub- 
born?" 

382 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I  shall  let  you  find  that  out  for  yourself — 
as  we  go  on." 

"Oh!  as  we  go  on?" 

"Yes,  as  we  go  on,  Jennie.  We're  going  on. 
Don't  make  any  mistake  about  that.  I  know 
how  you  feel.  Everything  looks  so  dark  to  you 
now  that  you  can't  believe  it  will  ever  be  light 
again;  but  it  will  be,  Jennie.  All  families  and 
all  individuals  go  through  these  experiences — 
not  as  terrible  as  yours,  perhaps — but  terrible 
all  the  same.  Not  one  of  us  is  spared.  Some- 
times it  seems  to  you  as  if  you  just  couldn't  go 
through  with  it;  but  you  can.  You  must  hang 
on — and  bear  it — and  it  will  pass.  That's  what 
I'm  here  for — to  help  you  to  hang  on — and, 
Jennie,  clinging  together,  as  we're  doing,  we'll 
ccme  out  to  the  light — even  Teddy — and  your 
mother.  Oh,  look!  There  the  light  is  now — the 
light  everlasting — that  always  comes  back,  if 
we  only  wait  for  it!" 

At  the  pointing  of  his  finger  and  his  sudden 
cry  she  turned  to  face  the  eternal  wonder  of  the 
moonrise. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

DURING  the  next  few  months,  the  necessity 
for  bracing  Teddy  and  his  sisters  to  meet 
fate  threw  Bob  Collingham's  personal  peroccu- 
pations  more  and  more  into  the  background. 
All  that  was  implied  by  the  fact  that  Jennie  was 
his  wife  and  he  was  her  husband  went  into  this 
single  supreme  task. 

Habit  came  to  his  aid  by  fitting  them  all  to  the 
situation  as  though  they  had  never  been  in  any 
other.  They  grew  used  to  the  fact  that  Teddy 
was  in  jail  and  might  come  out  of  it  only  by  one 
exit.  Teddy  grew  used  to  it  himself.  The 
family,  once  more  at  Marillo,  grew  used  to  the 
odd  arrangement  by  which  Bob  and  Jennie 
worked  together  and  lived  apart.  The  Colling- 
hams  grew  used  to  the  thought  of  the  Folletts, 
and  the  Folletts  to  that  of  the  Collinghams. 

"You  get  used  to  anything,"  Junia  commented 
to  her  husband,  as  one  who  has  made  a  new  dis- 
covery. "It  seems  to  me  as  if  Edith's  living  in 
that  flat  on  Cathedral  Heights  and  keeping  only 
one  maid  is  all  I'd  ever  dreamed  for  her." 

To  Bob,  this  wonting  of  the  mind  was  the 
easier  because  Wray  stayed  in  California,  his 
absence  making  it  possible  to  leave  in  abeyance 
the  subjects  that  couldn't  yet  be  touched  upon. 

384 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

The  first  chance  of  fortifying  the  three  girls 
seemed  to  present  itself  on  a  night  in  that 
autumn  when  it  was  still  warm  enough  to  sit  on 
the  screened  piazza.  His  car  was,  as  usual,  before 
the  door,  and  in  an  hour  or  so  he  would  be  making 
his  way  to  Marillo.  As  he  had  returned  to  his 
work  at  the  bank,  his  spare  time  was  now  in  the 
evenings. 

"If  you  want  to  do  something  for  me,  Gladys, 
there's  a  way." 

He  said  this  in  reply  to  an  aspiration  of  all 
three,  in  which  the  youngest  sister  had  been 
spokesman. 

Gladys's  voice  was  eager  and  affectionate. 

"What  way,  Bob?  Tell  us.  We'll  do  any- 
thing." 

Smoothing  Pansy's  back  as  she  lay  on  his 
crossed  knees,  he  considered  how  best  to  make  it 
clear.  Gladys  sat  close  to  him,  as  the  one  who 
most  easily  took  him  fraternally.  Gussie,  in 
whom  he  stirred  an  unusual  self-consciousness, 
kept  herself  more  aloof.  Altogether  in  the 
shadow,  Jennie  was  seemingly  withdrawn,  and 
yet  more  intensely  aware  of  him  than  anyone. 

"It's  this  way,"  he  tried  to  explain:  "Living 
is  like  climbing  a  mountainside.  You  drag  your- 
self up  to  a  ledge  where  you  can  stand  and  take 
breath,  and  feel  that  you've  reached  somewhere. 
Then,  just  as  you  think  that  you  can  camp  there 
and  be  comfortable  for  the  rest  of  your  life,  you 
find  yourself  summoned  to  move  to  the  next 
ledge  higher  up.  At  that  some  of  us  get  dis- 

385 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

couraged ;  some  fall  off  and  go  down;  but  most 
of  us  brace  ourselves  for  another  great  big  test. 
Do  you  see?" 

Gladys  answered,  doubtfully,  "I  see — a  little." 

"Well  then,  the  thing  we  need  for  the  test  is 
pluck,  isn't  it?" 

Gussie  spoke  dreamily. 

"We  need  pluck  for  everything." 

"So  we  do;  and  I  often  think  that  we  don't 
make  enough  of  it.  Pluck  is  different  from  cour- 
age, because  it's — how  shall  I  say? — it's  a  little 
more  cheery  and  intimate.  Courage  is  like  a 
Sunday  suit  that  you  wear  for  big  occasions; 
but  pluck  is  your  everyday  clothes,  which  you 
need  all  the  time  and  feel  easy  in.  Courage  is 
noble  and  heroic — something  we'd  be  shy  about 
claiming.  Pluck  is  the  courage  of  the  common 
man,  which  anyone  can  feel  he  has  a  right  to." 

"I  can't,"  Gussie  confessed.  "I'm  the  aw- 
fulest  coward." 

With  this  Gladys  agreed. 

"Yes,  Gus  is  a  regular  scarecat.  I'm  not 
afraid  of  hardly  anything." 

"We're  all  cowards  in  our  way;  but  we  could 
all  be  plucky  when  we  mightn't  like  to  call  our- 
selves brave.  Do  you  get  what  I  mean?" 
Gladys  made  a  sound  of  assent  which  seemed  to 
answer  for  all  three.  "Well,  what  I'm  trying  to 
say  is  this:  That  the  time  has  come  when  we're 
all  being  summoned — you  three — and  me — and 
Teddy — and  all  of  us — to  pull  up  to  another 
ledge.  It's  going  to  be  tough,  but  we  can  make 

386 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

up  our  minds  that  we  can  go  through  with  it.  I 
don't  mean  just  knowing  that  we  must  go 
through  with  it,  but  knowing  that  we  can." 

There  was  silence  for  the  two  or  three  minutes 
during  which  the  girls  thought  this  over. 

"You  said,"  Gladys  reasoned,  "that  it  was 
something  we  could  do  for  you.  I  don't  see — ' 

"You'd  do  it  for  me,  because  it's  easier  to 
pull  with  strong  people  rather  than  with  weak 
ones.  You  see,  this  is  something  which  no  one 
of  us  can  meet  alone;  we  must  all  meet  it  to- 
gether, and  the  stronger  each  of  us  is  the  stronger 
we  all  are.  Being  strong  is  a  matter  of  knowing 
that  you're  strong,  just  as  being  weak  is  the 
same.  If  I  was  sure  that  none  of  you  was 
going  to  break  down,  I  could  be  stronger  myself, 
and  we  could  all  buck  up  Teddy." 

After  another  brief  silence,  Gladys  sighed. 

"All  the  same,  it  would  be  terrible — if  they 
did  anything  to  him." 

"Not  more  terrible  than  what  millions  of 
sisters  faced  in  the  last  few  years,  with  their 
brothers  blown  to  bits.  They  were  able  to  bear 
it  by  getting  the  idea  that  they  could." 

Jennie  spoke  for  the  first  time. 

"Ah,  but  that  was  glory,  and  this  is  disgrace." 

"Then  it  calls  for  more  pluck — that's  all. 
The  test  comes  to  one  in  one  way  and  to  another 
in  another.  Real  glory  is  in  meeting  it." 

It  was  still  Jennie  who  urged  the  difficulties. 

"But  when  it's  the  hardest  test  that  ever 
comes  to  anyone  in  the  world!" 

387 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Why,  then,  it's  pluck  again,  and  still  more 
pluck.  It  is  the  hardest  test  that  ever  comes  to 
anyone  in  the  world.  It's  harder  than  when 
women  hear  their  boys  are  missing,  and  never 
know  what  becomes  of  them;  and  that's  pretty 
hard.  But,  Jennie,  hard  things  are  the  making 
of  us,  and  if  we  come  through  the  hardest  test 
in  the  world  and  still  keep  our  kindlier  feelings 
and  our  common  sense,  why,  then,  we  come  out 
pretty  strong,  don't  we?" 

Jennie  said  no  more.  She  liked  to  have  him 
talk  to  them  in  this  way.  It  took  for  granted 
that  they  were  worth  talking  to,  and  to  become 
worth  talking  to  had  been  a  secret  aim  since  the 
day  when  she  first  learned  the  value  of  pictures 
and  books.  A  good  many  times  she  had  stolen 
in  to  confer  with  the  genial  custodian  at  the 
Metropolitan;  a  good  many  volumes  she  had 
hidden  in  her  room  to  study  after  she  went  to 
bed.  She  had  proved  to  herself  that  she  had  a 
mind;  and  now  Bob  was  hinting  at  unknown 
resources  of  strength.  It  nerved  her;  it  put  new 
heart  in  her.  Having  always  been  taught  to  con- 
sider herself  weak,  the  suggestion  that  she  could 
come  through  her  test  victoriously — that  she 
could  help  him  and  Gussie  and  Gladys  and  Teddy 
and  her  mother  to  do  the  same — thrilled  her  like 
a  sudden  revelation. 

To  Bob  himself  the  theme  was  not  a  new  one, 
though  it  was  the  first  time  he  had  ever  got  any 
of  it  into  words.  He  had  been  mulling  over  it 
and  round  it  ever  since  the  war  first  called  him 

388 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

from  a  state  of  mental  lethargy.  Needing  then 
a  clew  to  life,  he  had  cast  about  him  without 
finding  one.  Neither  Groton  nor  Harvard  had 
ever  given  him  anything  he  could  seize.  His 
parents  hadn't  given  him  anything,  nor  had 
their  religion.  Mentally,  he  had  gone  to  France 
much  as  a  jellyfish  puts  to  sea,  to  be  tossed  about 
without  volition  of  its  own,  and  get  its  support 
from  the  food  that  drifts  its  way.  Nothing  much 
had  drifted  his  way  till  he  found  himself  in  the 
hospital. 

There,  in  the  long,  empty  days  and  sleepless 
nights,  the  "why"  of  things  played  in  and  out  of 
his  brain  like  a  devil's  tattoo.  He  hated  to 
think  that  all  he  had  witnessed  was  futility  and 
waste,  and  yet  no  explanation  that  anyone  gave 
him  made  it  seem  otherwise.  The  question  of 
suffering  was  the  one  that  most  perplexed  him. 
What  was  the  good  of  it?  Why  had  it  to  be? 
Even  the  agony  of  his  slashed  head  and  crushed 
foot  was  almost  beyond  bearing;  and  what  was 
that  in  comparison  with  all  the  pain,  physical  and 
emotional,  at  that  minute  in  the  world  ?  What 
was  the  idea?  How  did  it  get  you  anywhere? 

In  as  far  as  he  received  an  answer,  it  came  one 
night  when  he  waked  from  a  light  doze.  He 
waked  repeating  certain  words  which  he  recog- 
nized as  vaguely  familiar: 

"  Thou  therefore  endure  hardness  as  a  good  soldier 
of  Jesus  Christ." 

He  said  them  over  two  or  three  times  before 
getting  their  significance. 

389 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"That's  it,"  he  thought  then.  "That's  why 
we  have  to  go  through  all  this  rumpus.  'Thou 
therefore  endure  hardness!'  Endure  it!  Accept 
it!  Rub  it  in!  That's  it,  by  gum!"  The  ex- 
pletive was  the  strongest  in  which  his  feeble 
state  allowed  him  to  indulge;  but  he  continued: 
"That's  what's  the  matter  with  me.  I'm  not 
hard.  I'm  soft.  I'm  soft  inside.  In  my  mind, 
in  my  heart,  I'm  like  putty,  like  dough.  It 
isn't  that  I'm  tender;  I'm  just  soft.  If  I've 
ever  had  to  bear  anything  hard,  I've  kicked 
like  the  dickens;  and  that's  why  I'm  such  an 
ass  now.  'Thou  therefore  endure  hardness!1 
I'll  be  hanged  if  I  won't  try." 

So  the  trying  came  to  be  a  kind  of  religion — 
not  a  very  vital  religion,  or  one  as  to  which  he 
was  very  keen,  and  yet  a  religion.  During  the 
winter  he  was  seeing  Jennie,  and  the  spring  he 
married  her,  and  the  summer  he  spent  in  South 
America,  he  had  fumbled  with  it  without  getting 
hold  of  it.  Not  till  he  began  his  strivings  with 
Teddy,  and  his  efforts  to  divert  the  minds  of 
Teddy's  family,  did  it  grow  sharply  defined  to 
his  vision  as  a  way  of  life. 

Perhaps  it  was  Teddy  who  taught  him.  Per- 
haps they  mutually  taught  each  other.  He 
couldn't  tell.  He  only  became  aware  that  some- 
thing was  working  in  the  boy  like  the  might  of 
spirit  in  the  inner  man.  Possibly  Teddy  was 
learning  more  quickly  than  himself  because  his 
lessons  were  more  intensive. 

He  noticed  this  first  on  the  day  when  he  went, 
39° 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

at  the  lawyer's  suggestion,  to  back  up  the  argu- 
ment that  to  plead  guilty  was  the  only  hope. 

"I've  done  all  I  can  with  him,"  Stenhouse 
declared.  "Now  it's  up  to  you.  He  thinks 
you're  God;  and  so  you  may  have  some  in- 
fluence." 

"But  I  never  will,"  Teddy  answered,  coolly. 
"I'd  never  have  done  society — as  the  chaplain 
calls  it — any  harm  if  society  hadn't  done  me 
harm  to  begin  with.  I  may  be  guilty  in  the 
second  place,  but  society  is  guilty  in  the  first, 
and  no  one  will  make  me  say  anything  different 
from  that." 

" That's  all  very  well,  Teddy;  but  society 
won't  accept  the  plea." 

"Then  it  can  do  the  other  thing." 

Bob's  tone  became  significant. 

"And  you  realize  what — what  the  other  thing 
might  be?" 

"You  bet  I  do!  You  can't  live  in  Murderers' 
Row  without  having  that  rubbed  into  you." 

They  talked  softly,  in  a  corner  of  the  visitors' 
room,  because  other  little  groups  were  scattered 
about,  each  centering  round  some  sullen,  swarthy 
man,  wreathed  in  mystery  and  darkness. 

"That's  all  right,  old  chap,"  Bob  agreed; 
"but  you  see,  don't  you,  that  it's  only  a  stand 
for  an  idea?" 

"It's  a  stand  for  telling  the  truth,  isn't  it?" 

"The  truth — as  you  see  it?" 

"The  truth  as  it  is — as  I'm  willing  to  bank 
on  it." 
26  391 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Banking  on  it  in  a  way  that — that  may  call 
for  a  great  deal  of  pluck." 

"Well,  I've  got  a  great  deal  of  pluck." 

"Yes — if  you've  got  enough.  It's  one  thing 
to  say  so  now,  and  another  to  prove  it  when  the 
time  comes." 

In  his  suppressed  vehemence  Teddy  grasped 
Bob's  wrist,  as  the  hands  of  both  lay  on  the 
small  table  above  which  their  heads  came 
together. 

"I've  got  the  pluck  for  anything  but  to  go 
before  their  court  and  say  what  you  want  me 
to  say.  I  took  the  money  because  my  father 
and  mother,  after  slaving  for  society  all  their 
lives,  had  a  right  to  it;  I  shot  a  man  because 
they'd  got  me  so  jumpy  with  all  the  wrongs 
they'd  done  me  that  I  didn't  know  what  my 
hand  was  up  to.  If  they  won't  let  me  have 
my  kind  of  justice,  they'll  just  have  to  dope  me 
out  their  own,  and  I'll  swallow  it." 

Another  conversation,  in  the  same  spot,  and 
with  heads  together  in  the  same  way,  was 
gentler. 

"I  know  pretty  well  what  they're  going  to 
hand  me  out — and  it  '11  be  all  right.  What 
kind  of  life  would  I  have  now,  even  if  they 
acquitted  me?  What  could  I  have  had  even  if 
I'd  never  got  into  this  scrape  at  all?  I'm  not 
cut  out  for  big  things.  I'm  just  the  same  size 
as  poor  old  dad,  and  I'd  have  gone  the  same 
way.  Ma's  got  it  straight — it's  not  good  enough. 
Think  of  rotting  in  an  office  all  your  life  just  to 

392 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

reach  the  gorgeous  sum  of  forty-five  a  week, 
and  when  you've  got  it  to  be  chucked  into  the 
hell  of  the  unemployed!  Say,  Bob,  why  can't 
everyone  have  enough  in  a  world  where  there's 
plenty  to  go  round?" 

"I  guess  it's  because  we  haven't  the  right 
kind  of  world." 

"But  why  haven't  we?  We've  been  at  it 
long  enough." 

"Perhaps  not.  That  may  be  where  the 
trouble  lies.  When  life  came  on  this  planet,  to 
begin  with,  it  took  millions  of  years  to  get  it 
anywhere.  Nobody  knows  how  long  it  was  before 
the  thing  that  lived  in  the  water  could  creep 
on  the  land;  but  it  was  time  to  be  reckoned  by 
ages.  When  you  come  to  ages,  the  human  race 
is  young.  It's  made  a  life  for  itself  which  it 
doesn't  know  how  to  swing.  In  a  few  more 
ages  it  may  learn;  but  it  hasn't  learned  as  yet." 

Teddy  reflected. 

"So  you've  just  got  to  take  it  as  it  is." 

"That  seems  to  be  the  number.  We  may  kick 
because  it  isn't  perfect,  but  we  don't  know  how 
to  make  it  perfect,  and  that's  all  there  is  to 
say." 

"It's  easier  for  your  kind  to  say  than  for  ours." 

"It's  not  as  easy  as  it  seems  for  any  kind. 
I  don't  see  anyone,  rich  or  poor,  who  hasn't 
to  spend  most  of  his  energy  in  bucking  up. 
The  poor  think  it's  easier  for  the  rich,  because 
they  have  the  money;  and  the  rich  think  it's 
easier  for  the  poor,  because  they  haven't  the 

393 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

responsibilities.  So  there  you  are.  I  begin  to 
think  that  making  yourself  strong — hard — tough 
in  your  inner  fiber — is  about  the  biggest  asset 
you  can  bring  to  life." 

"Or  death,"  Teddy  said,  softly. 

"Or  death,"  Bob  agreed. 

On  another  occasion,  Teddy  was  in  another 
mood. 

"If  I  didn't  get  it  now,  I  guess  it  would  have 
come  along  later;  so  that  it's  just  as  well  to 
have  it  over." 

Bob's  mind  went  back  to  Stenhouse's  view 
of  Teddy's  character. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

"Oh,  just  what  I  say.  You  can't  see  red  like 
me  without  being  a  more  dangerous  cuss  than 
you  mean  to  be.  I'd  have  got  into  trouble 
sometime,  even  if  I  hadn't  done  this."  Before 
Bob  could  find  a  response  Teddy  went  on:  "I 
suppose  you  think  that  because  I  don't  say 
anything  about  Flynn  I  haven't  got  him  on  my 
mind.  Well,  you're  wrong." 

"Oh,  I  didn't  think  that." 

"But  what  can  I  say?  I  think  and  think  and 
think,  and  then  begin  thinking  again.  So  that,'* 
he  jerked  out,  "that's  a  reason,  too." 

"A  reason  for  what,  Teddy?" 

He  answered  obliquely. 

"I  can't  keep  up  that  kind  of  thinking.  I'll 
go  crazy  if  I  do.  I'd  rather  be  sent  to  where  I 
can  get  another  point  of  view.  I  don't  care 
what  kind  of  point  of  view  it  is,  so  long  as  it 

394 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

V 

isn't  this  one.  If  I  could  come  face  to  face  with 
Flynn,  I  believe  I  could  make  him  understand. 
Do  you  suppose  there's  any  chance  of  that  ? " 

It  was  inevitable  that,  in  the  long  run,  specu- 
lative questions  should  lead  them  farther  still. 

"What  do  you  suppose  God  is?"  Teddy  said, 
unexpectedly,  one  day. 

Bob  smiled. 

"Ask  me  something  easier/' 

"But  you  must  have  some  idea." 

"I'm  not  sure  that  I  have." 

"Don't  you  believe  in  God?  I  should  have 
thought  that  you'd  be  the  kind  of  cuss  who 
would." 

"I  don't  know  that  you  can  call  it  believing. 
It's  more  like — like  having  a  kind  of  instinct — 
helped  out  by  a  little  thinking." 

"  Have  I  got  the  instinct  ? " 

"Can't  you  tell  that  yourself?" 

"If  I  told  you  you'd  howl." 

"No,  I  shouldn't.    Go  to  it." 

Teddy  laughed  sheepishly,  as  if  he  had  ven- 
tured to  peer  into  secrets  which  were  none  of  his 
business. 

"I'll  tell  you  the  way  God  seems  to  me — 
it's  all  come  to  me  while  I've  been  in  there." 
He  nodded  toward  the  cells.  "I  don't  seem  to 
get  him  as  a  great  big  man,  the  way  the  chaplain 
says  he  is.  He's  all  right,  the  chaplain,  only  he 
don't  seem  to  know  anything  about  God.  He 
can  gas  away  to  beat  the  band  about  law,  and 
society,  and  the  good  of  the  community,  and 

395 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

hell  to  pay  when  you  don't  respect  them;    but 
when  it  comes  to  God — it's  nix." 

"Well,  what  do  you  make  out  for  yourself?" 

"I  haven't  made  it  out  exactly.     It's  as  if 

some  great  big  hand  had  pulled  aside  a  curtain — 

but  it's  a  curtain  that  I  didn't  know  was  there. 

See?" 

"Yes,  I  see.  And  what  does  it  show  you?" 
"That's  the  funny  part  of  it.  I  can't  tell 
you  what  it  shows  me.  I  don't  exactly  see  it; 
I  only  know — mind  you,  I'm  just  telling  you 
how  it  seems  to  me — I  only  know  that  it's 
God." 

"  But  I  suppose,  if  you  know  that  it's  God,  you 
have  an  idea  of  what  it's  like?" 

"Ye-es;  it's  like — like  a  country  into  which 
I'm  traveling — not  with  my  body — see? — but 
with  my  self.  No,"  he  corrected,  "that's  not  it. 
It  isn't  a  country;  it's  more  like  a  life.  Oh, 
shucks!  I  haven't  got  it  straight  yet.  Now 
look!  This  is  the  way  it  is.  Suppose  that 
everything  we  see  was  alive — that  these  chairs 
were  alive,  and  the  walls,  and  the  table — that 
every  blamed  thing  we  ever  touch  or  use  was 
alive,  and  had  a  voice.  See?"  Bob  nodded 
that  he  saw.  "Now,  suppose  every  voice  was 
trying  to  make  you  understand  things.  The 
table  would  say,  'This  is  the  way  God  wants 
you  to  work';  and  the  chair,  'This  is  the  way 
God  wants  you  to  rest';  and  the  walls,  'This 
is  the  way  God  stands  round  you  and  backs  you 
up.'  Everything  would  be  heloing  you  then, 

396 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

instead  of  putting  itself  dead  against  you  the 
way  we  have  it  here." 

"I  get  the  idea;    but  would  that  be  God?" 
Over   this    question   the   boy's   face   brooded 
thoughtfully. 

"It  mightn't  be  God  in  the  way  that  you're 
you  and  I'm  me.  It  would  be  more  like  a  way 
of  knowing  God.  It's  like  my  case  in  the  courts. 
It's  set  down  as  'The  People  against  Edward 
S.  Follett.'  But  I  don't  see  the  People;  I  only 
feel  what  they  do  to  me.  It's  something  like 
that.  I  don't  see  God;  but  I  kind  of  feel—  He 
broke  with  another  apologetic  laugh.  "Oh,  I 
guess  it's  all  wrong.  Gussie'd  call  me  a  gump. 
It  just  kind  of  gets  you;  that's  all.  It  makes  me 
feel  as  if  I  was  moving  on  into  something — but 
I  guess  I'm  not." 

The  pensive  silence  that  followed  was  broken 
by  Bob's  saying: 

"That's  what  I  mean  by  instinct." 
Teddy  resumed  as  if  he  hadn't  heard.  "When 
I  wake  up  in  the  night — and  waking  up  in  the 
night  in  that  place,  with  snores  and  groans  and 
guys  talking  in  their  sleep  and  having  night- 
mares, is  some  stunt,  believe  me — but  when  I 
do,  it's  just  as  if  I  had  great  big  arms  round  me, 
and  some  one  was  saying:  'All  right,  Teddy,  I'm 
holding  you.  Keep  a  stiff  upper  lip.  I'll  make 
it  as  easy  as  I  can  for  you  and  everyone  else. 
I'm  just  drawing  you — drawing  you — drawing 
you — a  <vee  little  bit  at  a  time — over  here, 
where  you'll  get  your  big  chance.*  What's  more, 

397 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Bob,"  he  went  on,  as  if  he  touched  on  the  heart 
of  his  interest,  "it  says  it  '11  take  care  of 
Flynn  and  his  wife  and  his  poor  little  kiddies, 
and  do  the  things — "  Once  more  he  broke  off 
with  his  uneasy  laugh.  "Ah,  what's  the 
use?  You  think  I'm  a  quitter,  don't  you?" 

"Why  should  I  think   that?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  I  talk  like  a  quitter. 
But  it  isn't  that.  If  I  could  still  do  anything 
for  ma  and  the  girls — " 

"I'm  looking  after  them,  old  boy." 

"So  there  you  are.  What  'd  be  the  good  of 
my  staying?"  He  added,  between  clenched 
teeth,  "God,  how  I'd  hate  to  go  back!" 

"Back  into  the  world?" 

He  spoke  as  if  to  himself:  "You  see — that 
day — the  day  the  thing  happened — and  they 
came  and  caught  me — and  did  all  those  things 
to  me — and  I  saw  Flynn  lying  by  the  road — 
it  was — it  was  a  kind  of  sickener.  If  putting 
me  out  of  the  way  is  the  thing  in  the  wind,  it 
was  done  right  there  and  then.  Right  there  and 
then  I  seem  to  have  begun — moving  on."  He 
drew  a  long  breath.  "And  I'd  rather  keep 
moving,  Bob — no  matter  to  where — no  matter 
to  what — than  turn  back  again  to  face  a  bunch 
of  men." 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

TEDDY  was  not  called  on  to  face  a  bunch  of 
men  till  going  to  the  courtroom  for  his 
trial.  Dressed  long  before  the  hour  in  a  new 
dark-blue  suit,  fresh  linen,  and  a  dark-blue  tie, 
his  prison  pallor,  a  little  like  that  of  death,  put 
him  out  of  the  list  of  the  active  and  free.  As 
he  sat  on  the  edge  of  his  bunk,  somber  with 
dread,  he  was  nevertheless  obliged  to  find 
suitable  jocosities  with  which  to  answer  the 
good-luck  wishes  that  came  slithering  along  the 
walls  from  the  neighboring  cells.  It  was  half  past 
nine  before  two  guards  whom  he  had  never 
seen  before,  stalwart  fellows  well  over  six  feet, 
came  to  the  door  and  unlocked  it. 

"Ready,  Follett?    Time's  come." 

Springing  to  his  feet,  he  found  handcuffs 
slipped  round  his  wrists  before  he  was  aware  of 
what  was  being  done.  It  was  an  unexpected 
indignity.  He  had  never  been  handcuffed 
before. 

"Say,  fellows,"  he  protested,  "I'll  go  all 
right.  I  don't  want  these  on  me." 

"Come  along  wid  ye." 

The  words  were  friendly  rather  than  rough, 
as  was  also  the  hand  of  a  guard  on  each  shoulder 
as  they  steered  him  along  the  corridor.  The 

399 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Brig  is  a  rambling  building,  or  succession  of 
buildings,  with  courthouse  and  house  of  deten- 
tion under  the  same  series  of  roofs.  The  pil- 
grimage was  long — upstairs,  downstairs,  through 
passages,  past  offices,  past  courtrooms,  with 
guards,  police,  clerks,  lawyers,  litigants,  loungers, 
standing  about  everywhere.  The  sight  of  a  man 
in  handcuffs  arrested  all  eyes  for  the  moment, 
and  stilled  all  tongues.  With  his  glances  flying 
from  right  to  left  and  from  left  to  right,  Teddy 
again  began  to  feel  the  sense  of  separation  from 
the  human  race  which  had  struck  to  his  soul 
that  day  on  the  marshes. 

Of  his  other  impressions,  the  chief  was  that  of 
squalor.  It  seemed  as  if  all  the  elements  had 
been  brought  together  that  would  make  poor 
Justice  vulgar  and  unimpressive.  Out  of  a 
squalid  cell  he  had  been  pushed  along  squalid 
hallways,  through  groups  of  squalid  faces,  into 
a  squalid  courtroom,  where  he  was  ushered  into 
a  squalid  cage,  long  and  narrow,  with  a  seat 
hardly  wider  than  a  knife  blade.  Once  within 
the  cage  the  handcuffs  were  taken  off,  the  door 
was  locked,  and  each  of  the  stalwart  guards 
took  his  stand  at  one  end.  The  cage  being 
raised  some  six  or  eight  inches  above  the  level  of 
the  floor,  the  boy  was  well  in  sight  of  everyone. 
It  was  like  being  on  a  throne — or  a  Calvary. 

On  taking  his  seat,  he  was  vaguely  conscious 
of  a  bank  of  faces,  tier  above  tier,  at  the 
back  of  the  courtroom.  Before  him  some 
fifteen  or  twenty  officials,  reporters,  and  lawyers 

400 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

lolled  at  their  tables,  walked  about,  yawned, 
picked  their  teeth,  or  told  anecdotes  that  raised 
a  smothered  laugh.  Most  of  them  struck  him 
as  untidily  dressed;  few  looked  intelligent. 
Among  them  a  portly  man,  whom  he  afterward 
saw  as  the  district  attorney,  in  a  cutaway  coat, 
with  a  line  of  pique  at  the  opening  of  his  waist- 
coat, seemed  like  a  person  in  fancy  costume. 
Everyone  paused  as  he  entered  the  cage,  but,  a 
glance  having  satisfied  their  curiosity,  they  paid 
him  no  further  attention. 

The  trial  lasted  three  days,  passing  before 
his  eyes  like  a  motion-picture  film  of  which  he 
was  only  a  spectator.  Try  as  he  would,  he  found 
it  hard  to  believe  that  the  proceedings  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  him.  "All  this  fuss,"  he  would 
comment  to  himself,  grimly,  "to  get  the  right 
to  kill  a  man."  The  strain  of  being  under  so 
many  cruel  or  indifferent  eyes  sent  him  back 
with  relief  to  his  cell,  where  during  the  nights 
he  slept  soundly. 

His  one  bit  of  surprise  came  from  Sten- 
house's  final  argument  in  his  defense.  Up  to 
that  point,  both  defense  and  prosecution  had 
struck  him  as  more  or  less  silly.  The  state  had 
tried  to  prove  him  a  desperado  whom  it  was 
dangerous  to  let  live;  the  defense  had  done  its 
best  to  show  him  a  youth  of  arrested  intelli- 
gence, not  responsible  for  his  acts.  He  grinned 
inwardly  when  Jennie,  Gussie,  and  half  a  dozen 
of  his  old  chums  testified  to  foolish  pranks, 
forgotten  or  half  forgotten  by  himself,  in  the 

401 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

hope  of  convincing  the  court  that  he  had  never 
had  the  normal  sense. 

But  Stenhouse  in  his  concluding  speech 
transcended  all  that,  taking  Teddy's  own  stand 
as  the  only  one  which  offered  the  ghost  of  a 
chance  of  acquittal.  He  began  his  final  appeal 
quietly,  in  a  tone  little  more  than  colloquial. 

"There's  an  old  saying,  a  variant  on  some- 
thing said  by  Benjamin  Franklin,  which  we 
might  remember  oftener  than  we  do.  It's 
terse,  pithy,  humorous,  wise.  Some  one  has 
called  it  the  finest  bit  of  free  verse  composed  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  Listen  to  it.  * It  is 
hard  to  make  an  empty  sack  stand  upright*  So 
it  is.  The  empty  sack  collapses  of  its  own 
accord.  It  can't  do  anything  but  collapse.  It 
was  not  meant  to  stand  upright.  To  demand 
that  it  shall  stand  upright  is  to  insist  on  the 
impossible.  A  full  sack  will  stand  as  solid  as 
a  tree.  A  group  of  full  sacks  will  support  one 
another.  Put  the  empty  sack  among  them 
and  from  the  very  law  of  gravitation  it  will 
go  down  helplessly.  Now,  gentlemen  of  the 
jury,  you're  being  asked  to  bring  in  a  verdict 
against  the  empty  sack — the  sack  that's  been 
carefully  kept  empty — because  it  hasn't  the 
strength  and  stability  of  that  which  all  the 
coffers  of  the  country  have  combined  to  fill/* 

With  this  as  a  text,  Stenhouse  drew  a  picture 
of  the  industrious  man  who  is  limited  by  the 
very  nature  of  his  industry.  He  is  not  limited 
by  his  own  desire,  but  by  the  use  society  wishes 

402 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

to  make  of  him.  Serving  a  turn,  he  is  schooled 
to  serve  that  turn,  and  to  serve  no  other  turn. 
This  schooling  takes  him  unawares.  He  doesn't 
know  it  has  begun  before  waking  to  find  himself 
drilled  to  a  system  from  which  only  a  giant  can 
escape.  Few  men  being  giants,  the  average  man 
plods  on  because  he  doesn't  know  what  else  to 
do.  There  is  rarely  anything  else  for  him  to  do. 
Having  taken  the  first  ill-paid  job  that  comes  his 
way,  he  hasn't  meant  to  give  himself  to  it  all 
his  life.  He  dreams  of  something  bigger,  onore 
brilliant,  more  productive.  The  boy  who  runs 
errands  sees  himself  a  merchant;  the  lad  who 
becomes  a  clerk  looks  forward  to  being  a 
partner;  the  young  man  who  enters  a  bank  is 
sure  that  some  day  he  will  be  bank  president. 

"Sometimes,  gentlemen,  these  early  visions 
work  out  to  a  reality.  But  in  the  vast  majority 
of  cases,  the  youth,  before  he  ceases  to  be  a 
youth,  finds  himself  where  the  horse  is  when  he 
has  once  submitted  to  the  bridle.  He  can  go 
only  as  he  is  driven.  Life  is  organized  not  to 
let  him  go  in  any  other  way.  Needing  him  for  a 
certain  purpose,  it  keeps  him  to  that  purpose. 
Work,  taken  as  a  great  corporate  thing,  is 
made  up  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  tiny  tasks 
each  of  which  calls  for  a  man.  The  man  being 
found,  he  must  be  trimmed  to  the  size  of  his 
task." 

Stenhouse  had  no  quarrel  with  methods  uni- 
versally followed  by  civilized  man.  To  criti- 
cize them  was  not  his  intention,  as  it  was  not 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

his  intention  to  complain  because  man  had  not 
yet  brought  in  the  Golden  Age. 

"But  I  do  claim  that  the  smaller  the  task  to 
which  a  man  is  nailed  down,  and  the  smaller 
the  pay  he  is  able  to  earn,  the  greater  the  respon- 
sibility of  collective  society  toward  that  in- 
dividual." 

There  was  a  time,  he  declared,  when  much 
had  been  said  to  the  discredit  of  slavery;  but 
one  thing  could  be  urged  in  its  favor.  The  man 
who  had  been  kept  throughout  his  life  to  one 
small  job  was  not  thrown  out  in  his  old  age  to 
provide  for  himself  as  he  could.  Having  worked 
for  society,  as  society  was  constituted  then,  so- 
ciety recognized  at  least  the  duty  of  taking  care 
of  him.  Stenhouse  disclaimed  any  comparison 
between  free  American  labor  and  a  servile  con- 
dition; he  was  striving  only  for  a  principle. 
Men  couldn't  be  screwed  down  during  all  their 
working  lives  to  the  lowest  wage  on  which  body 
and  soul  could  be  kept  together,  and  then  be 
judged  by  the  same  standards  as  those  who  had 
had  opportunity  to  make  provision  for  them- 
selves and  their  families.  The  same  interpre- 
tation of  the  law  couldn't  be  made  to  cover  the 
cases  of  the  full  sack  and  the  empty  one. 

"And  yet,"  he  went  on,  changing  his  tone 
with  his  theme,  "the  empty  sack  is  of  value 
because  it  can  be  filled.  Coarse,  cheap,  negligible 
as  it  seems,  it  is  much  too  good  to  throw  away. 
It  is  an  asset  to  production,  to  the  country's 
trade,  to  the  whole  world's  wealth.  And,  gentle- 

404 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

men,  what  shall  we  say  when  we  call  that  empty 
sack — a  man?" 

The  value  of  the  human  asset  was  the  next 
point  to  which  he  led  his  listeners. 

"It  is  only  a  truism  to  say  that  among  all 
the  precious  things  with  which  the  Almighty 
has  blessed  his  creation  the  most  precious  is  a 
human  life;  and  yet  we  live  in  a  world  which 
seems  to  believe  this  so  little  that  we  must 
sometimes  remind  ourselves  that  it  is  so.  Within 
a  few  years  we  have  seen  millions  of  men  reckoned 
merely  as  stuff.  As  productive  assets  to  the 
race,  they  haven't  counted.  We  could  read  of 
a  day's  loss  on  the  battlefield  running  up 
into  the  thousands  and  never  turn  a  hair.  We 
came  to  regard  a  young  man's  life  as  primarily  a 
thing  to  throw  away.  It  is  for  this  reason, 
gentlemen  of  the  jury,  that  I  venture  to  remind 
you  that  a  young  man's  life  is  primarily  a  thing 
to  save.  It  may  be  a  truism  to  say  that  a 
human  life  is  the  most  precious  of  all  created 
things;  but  it  is  a  truism  of  which  we  are  only 
now,  to  our  bitter  and  incalculable  cost,  begin- 
ning to  realize  the  truth." 

He  went  on  to  draw  a  picture  of  the  contri- 
butions to  the  general  good  made  by  the  Fol- 
letts,  father  and  son.  Their  work  had  been 
humble,  but  it  had  been  essential.  Essential 
work  faithfully  performed  should  guarantee  an 
old  age  protected  against  penury.  He  reminded 
his  hearers  that  he  was  not  opposed  to  the  law 
of  supply  and  demand,  which  was  the  only 

405 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

known  method  by  which  the  business  of  the 
world  could  be  carried  on.  He  only  pleaded  for 
the  same  humanity  to  a  man  as  was  shown  to 
a  broken-down  old  horse.  From  his  one  inter- 
view with  Lizzie,  Stenhouse  had  got  what  he 
called  "the  good  line,"  "  Thou  shalt  not  muz- 
zle the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn."  Of  this 
he  now  made  use,  following  it  up  with  St. 
Paul's  explanation:  "Doth  God  take  care  for 
oxen?  Or  saith  he  it  altogether  for  our  sakes? 
For  our  sakes,  no  doubt,  this  is  written:  that 
he  that  ploweth  may  plow  in  hope;  and  that  he 
that  thresheth  in  hope  should  be  partaker  of 
his  hope." 

"Gentlemen,  so  long  as  we  live  in  a  society  in 
which  the  vast  majority  of  us  can  never  be  par- 
takers of  the  hope  with  which  we  started  out,  so 
long  must  justice  take  account  of  the  suffering 
of  the  poor  muzzled  brute  that  treadeth 
out  the  corn.  If  he  goes  frenzied  and  runs 
amuck,  he  cannot  be  judged  by  the  standards 
which  apply  to  him  who  has  been  left  unmuz- 
zled and  free  to  satisfy  his  wants.  It  is  not  fair; 
it  is  not  human.  It  is  true  that  to  protect  your 
own  interests  you  have  the  power  to  shoot  him 
down;  but  when  he  lies  dead  at  your  feet,  no 
more  muzzled  in  death  than  he  was  in  life,  there 
is  surely  somewhere  in  the  universe  an  avenging 
force  that  is  on  his  side,  and  which  will  make 
you — you  as  representatives  of  the  society 
which  has  placed  its  action  in  your  hands — and 
you  as  twelve  private  individuals  with  duties 

406 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

and  consciences — there  is  somewhere  in  the 
universe  this  avenging  force  which  will  require 
his  blood  at  your  hands  and  make  you  pay  the 
penalty.  Surely  you  can  find  a  bette- 
that  valuable  asset,  a  young  man's  life,  than  JUSL 
to  take  it  away.  For  the  sake  of  the  public 
whose  honor  is  in  your  keeping,  you  must  play 
the  game  squarely.  For  the  sake  of  your  own 
future  peace  of  mind,  you  must  not  add  your 
own  crime  to  this  poor  boy's  misfortune.  Your 
duty  at  this  minute  is  not  merely  to  interpret  the 
dead  letter  of  a  law;  it  is  to  be  the  voice  of  the 
People  whom  you  represent.  Remember  that 
by  the  verdict  you  bring  in  that  People  will  be 
committed  to  the  most  destructive  of  all  de- 
structive acts,  or  it  will  get  expression  for  that 
deep,  human  common  sense  which  transcends 
written  phrases  to  act  in  the  spirit  of  the  greatest 
of  us  all,  judging  not  according  to  the  appearance 
— not  according  to  the  appearance,  gentlemen, 
and  you  remember  who  counseled  that — but 
judging  righteous  judgment." 

He  fell  back  into  his  seat,  exhausted.  He  was  so 
impressive  and  impassioned  as  to  convince  many 
of  his  hearers  that  he  believed  his  own  plea, 
while  to  some  who  had  considered  the  verdict  a 
certainty  it  was  now  in  doubt. 

Among  Teddy's  friends  a  hope  arose  that,  in 
spite  of  all  expectation  to  the  contrary,  he  might 
be  saved.  Bob  looked  over  and  smiled.  Teddy 
smiled  back,  but  mainly  because  he  rejoiced  in 
what  he  felt  to  be  his  justification.  He  couldn't 
27  40? 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

see  how  they  could  convict  him  after  such  a 
setting  forth  as  that,  though  for  the  conse- 
quences of  acquittal  he  had  so  little  heart. 

On  the  excitement  of  the  courtroom,  the 
judge's  voice,  when  he  began  to  give  the  jury 
their  instructions,  fell  like  cool,  quiet  rain  on 
thunderous  sultriness.  He  was  a  small  man, 
with  a  leathery,  unemotional  face,  framed  by  an 
iron-gray  wig  of  faultless  side-parting  and  long, 
straight,  unnaturally  smooth  hair.  He  had  the 
faculty  of  seeming  attentive  without  being  influ- 
enced. Listening,  reasoning,  asking  a  question, 
or  settling  a  disputed  point,  he  gave  the  impres- 
sion of  having  reduced  intelligence  to  the  soulless 
accuracy  of  a  cash  register. 

He  reminded  the  jury  that  the  law  was  not  on 
trial;  society  was  not  on  trial;  the  industrial  ex- 
perience of  one  Josiah  Follett  was  not  a  feature 
in  the  case.  They  must  not  allow  the  issue  to  be 
confused  by  the  social  arguments  which  befogged 
so  many  of  the  questions  of  the  day.  It  was  quite 
possible  that  the  world  was  not  as  perfect  as  it 
might  be;  it  was  even  possible  that  the  law 
was  not  the  most  perfect  law  that  could  be  passed. 
But  these  were  considerations  into  which  they 
could  not  enter.  In  merely  approaching  them, 
they  would  lose  their  way.  The  law  as  it  stands 
is  the  voice  of  the  People  as  it  is;  and  the  only 
questions  before  them  were,  first,  whether  or  not 
the  accused  had  broken  that  law,  and  second,  if 
he  had  broken  it,  to  what  degree.  In  answering 
these  questions,  they  must  limit  themselves  to 

408 

( 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

the  bare  facts  of  the  charge.  With  the  prisoner's 
temptations  they  had  nothing  to  do,  except  in  so 
far  as  they  tended  to  create  intent.  The  conse- 
quences to  his  person,  whether  in  the  way  of 
liberty  or  of  the  last  penalty,  were  no  concern  of 
others.  Justice  in  itself,  viewed  as  justice  in  the 
abstract,  was  no  concern  of  theirs.  They  were 
not,  however,  to  burden  their  consciences  with 
the  fear  that  the  accused  was  thus  deprived  of 
protection.  The  duty  of  a  jury  was  not  protec- 
tion, but  discernment.  The  administration  of  the 
law  was  far  too  big  and  complex  a  thing  for  any 
one  body  of  men  to  deal  with.  Justice  having 
many  aspects,  the  law  had  as  many  departments. 
Protection  was  in  other  hands  than  theirs.  The 
application  of  justice  pure  and  simple,  involving 
punishment  for  guilt  without  excluding  pity  for 
the  provocation,  was  duly  guaranteed  by  the 
methods  of  the  state.  They  would  find  their 
task  simplified  by  dismissing  all  such  hesitations 
from  their  minds  and  confining  themselves  to  the 
definite  question  which  he  repeated,  Had  the 
prisoner  at  the  bar  broken  the  existing  law,  and 
if  he  had  so  broken  it,  to  what  degree? 

Having  explained  the  difference  between  man- 
slaughter and  murder,  as  well  as  between  first- 
degree  murder  and  second,  he  admitted  that,  in 
case  the  accused  was  found  guilty,  there  was 
much  to  indicate  the  second  degree  rather  than 
the  first.  There  was,  however,  one  damning 
fact.  The  hand  that  had  shot  Peter  Flynn  went 
on  at  once  to  shoot  William  Jackman.  The 

409 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

killing  of  one  man  might  have  been  an  accident. 
If  not  an  accident,  it  might  still  have  mitigating 
features.  But  for  the  murderer  of  a  first  man  to 
proceed  at  once  to  become  the  murderer  of  a 
second  indicated  a  planned  and  deliberate 
intent.  .  .  . 

When  the  court  had  adjourned  and  the  jury  had 
retired  to  consider  their  verdict,  one  of  the  guards 
unlocked  the  cage  and  Teddy  was  taken  down 
by  a  corkscrew  staircase  to  a  room  immediately 
below.  It  was  a  small  room,  lighted  by  one 
feeble  bulb,  and  aired  from  an  air  shaft.  A 
table  and  two  chairs  stood  in  the  middle  of  the 
room;  a  shiny,  well-worn  bench  was  fixed  to  one 
of  the  walls.  The  guards  took  the  chairs;  Teddy 
sat  down  on  the  bench.  One  of  the  guards  cut 
off  a  piece  of  tobacco  and  put  it  in  his  mouth;  the 
other  lighted  a  cheap  cigar.  Taking  another 
from  an  upper  waistcoat  pocket,  he  held  it  out 
toward  Teddy. 

"Have  a  smoke,  young  fella?" 

Teddy  shook  his  head.  He  was  hardly  aware 
of  being  addressed.  Nothing  else  was  said  to 
him,  and  the  guards,  almost  silently,  began  a 
game  of  cards.  This  waiting  with  prisoners  for 
verdicts  was  always  a  tedious  affair,  and  one  to 
be  got  through  patiently. 

To  Teddy,  it  was  not  so  much  tedious  as  it  was 
unreal.  He  sat  with  arms  folded,  his  head  sunk, 
and  the  foot  of  the  leg  which  was  thrown  across 
the  other  leg  kicking  outward  mechanically. 
Except  for  a  rare  grunted  remark  between  the 

410 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

players,  there  was  no  sound  but  the  slap  of  the 
cards  on  the  table  and  the  scooping  in  of  the 
tricks. 

After  nearly  half  an  hour  the  door  opened  and 
Bob  CoJlingham  came  in  with  a  basket  containing 
sandwiches  and  a  thermos  bottle  of  hot  coffee. 
With  a  word  of  explanation  to  the  guards,  he 
was  allowed  to  take  his  seat  beside  the  prisoner. 

"Hello,  old  sport!  Must  be  relieved  that  it's 
so  soon  going  to  be  over.  Brought  you  some- 
thing to  eat." 

With  this  introduction,  they  took  up  common- 
place ground  as  if  it  was  a  commonplace  oc- 
casion. Teddy  asked  after  his  mother  and  sis- 
ters; Bob  gave  him  the  family  news.  Of  the 
trial  they  said  nothing.  Of  what  they  were 
waiting  for  no  more  was  said  than  that  Bob  had 
persuaded  Jennie  and  Gussie  to  go  home,  promis- 
ing to  come  and  tell  them  the  decision.  Lizzie 
and  Gladys  had  not  appeared  in  the  courtroom 
at  all.  Of  all  this  Teddy  approved  as  he  munched 
his  sandwiches  stolidly. 

The  supply  of  food  and  coffee  being  large,  they 
invited  the  guards  to  share  with  them.  The  in- 
vitation was  accepted,  the  officers  suspending 
their  game.  The  talk  became  friendly,  com- 
menting on  the  judge's  wig  and  the  glass  eye  of 
the  foreman  of  the  jury,  but  not  touching  directly 
on  the  trial.  These  subjects,  as  well  as  the  supply 
of  sandwiches,  exhausted,  the  guards  returned 
to  their  game,  the  two  young  men  being  left  to 
themselves. 

411 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

For  the  most  part  they  sat  in  silence — a 
silence  as  nearly  cheerful  as  the  circumstances 
permitted. 

"Don't  worry  about  me,  Bob,"  Teddy  mur- 
mured once.  "  I'm  not  going  to  care  much  which- 
ever way  it  is.  Honest  to  God!  I  don't  say  I 
wouldn't  like  it  if  they  sent  me  back  home;  but 
if  they  don't — " 

Allowing  his  companion  to  finish  the  sentence 
for  himself,  he  lapsed  into  silence  again. 

Another  time,  speaking  as  if  subterranean 
thought  came  for  a  moment  to  the  surface,  he 
said: 

"I  liked  what  you  said  about  hardness — and 
pluck.  I've  been  practicing  away  on  them  both 
— making  myself  tough  inside.  Funny  how  you 
can,  isn't  it?  You  think  at  first  that,  because 
you're  soft,  you've  got  to  be  soft;  but  you  find 
out  that  you're  just  what  you  like  to  make  your- 
self. That's  a  great  line,  Bob,  '  Thou  therefore 
endure  hardness  as  a  good  soldier  of  Jesus  Christ.' 
You  watch,"  he  added,  with  a  tremulous  smile, 
"and  you'll  see  me  doing  it." 

"All  right,  old  boy,  I'll  watch,  but  we'll  all  be 
doing  it  with  you.  We're  practicing,  too.  Jennie 
and  the  girls  are  regular  bricks,  and,  of  course, 
your  mother — " 

He  smiled  again. 

"Good  old  ma!  She  sure  is  the  best  ever.  I'd 
be  sorrier  for  her  than  I  am  if  I  didn't  feel  certain 
that  if — that  if  I  go  she  won't  wait  long  after 
me."  He  swung  away  from  this  aspect  of  his 

412 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

thought  to  a  new  one.  "Say,  Bob,  do  you  sup- 
pose it's  a  sign  that  God  really  is  with  me — gump 
as  I  am ! — that  he's  sent  you  to  take  ma  and  the 
girls  off  my  hands — you  know — and  make  my 
mind  easy?" 

They  discussed  those  happenings  which  might 
reasonably  be  held  to  be  signs  of  Divine  good 
intention,  after  which  silence  fell  again.  The 
guards  grunted  or  yawned;  the  cards  were 
slapped  on  the  table;  the  tricks  were  pulled  in 
with  the  scratching  of  paper  against  wood.  An 
hour  went  by;  another  hour,  and  then  another. 
In  spite  of  his  efforts  to  make  himself  hard, 
Teddy  felt  the  tension.  Having  accidentally 
touched  Bob's  hand,  he  grasped  it  with  a  clutch 
like  a  vise.  He  was  still  clutching  it  when  a 
messenger  came  to  the  door  to  say  that  the  jury 
was  about  to  render  their  verdict  and  the  prisoner 
must  come  back  into  court. 

Bob  climbed  the  corkscrew  first.  A  guard 
followed  him,  then  Teddy,  then  the  other  guard. 
It  was  after  seven  in  the  evening.  The  court- 
room, relatively  empty,  had  a  sickly  look,  under 
crude  electric  lighting.  But  half  of  the  specta- 
tors had  come  back,  and  only  those  officials  and 
lawyers  who  were  obliged  to  be  in  their  places. 
All  the  reporters  were  there,  watching  for  every 
shade  in  Teddy's  face  and  seeing  more  than  he 
expressed. 

Bob  managed  to  pass  in  front  of  the  cage. 

"Remember,  Teddy — hardness  is  the  big 
word." 

413 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Sure  thing!"  Teddy  whispered  back. 

The  jury  filed  in.  The  judge  took  his  place. 
Teddy  was  ordered  to  stand  up.  He  stood 
very  straight,  his  hands  in  the  pockets  of  his 
jacket.  In  all  that  met  the  eye  he  was  a  sturdy, 
stocky  young  man,  pleasing  to  look  at,  and  with 
no  suggestion  of  the  criminal.  His  face  was 
grave  with  a  gravity  beyond  that  of  death,  but 
he  showed  no  sign  of  nervousness. 

If  anyone  showed  nervousness  it  was  the  fore- 
man of  the  jury,  a  good-natured  fish  dealer,  with 
a  drooping  reddish  mustache,  who  had  never 
expected  to  be  in  this  situation.  When  asked  if 
the  jury  had  arrived  at  a  verdict  his  voice 
trembled  as  he  answered: 

"We  have." 

"What  is  your  verdict?" 

"We  find  the  accused  guilty  of  murder." 

"Of  murder  in  the  first  or  the  second  degree?" 

"In  the  first." 

That  was  all.  Bob  wheeled  round  toward 
Teddy,  who  smiled  courageously. 

"It's  all  right,  Bob,"  he  whispered,  as  their 
hands  met  over  the  rail  of  the  cage.  "IVe  got 
the  right  line  on  it.  It's  my  medicine,  and  I 
know  how  to  take  it.  Keep  ma  and  the  girls 
from  worrying,  and  I  can  go  straight  through 
with  it." 

It  was  all  there  was  time  for.  They  had  not 
noticed  that  Stenhouse  had  said  something 
about  appeal,  and  the  judge  something  about 
sentence.  Everyone  was  leaving.  Stenhouse 

414 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

came  to  shake  hands  with  his  client  and  tell  him 
that  the  game  wasn't  up  yet.  The  boy  thanked 
him.  The  cage  was  unlocked,  and  once  more 
Teddy,  with  a  guard  in  front  and  a  guard  follow- 
ing after  him,  went  down  the  corkscrew  stair. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

"T  T  THAT  I  don't  understand,  Bob,"  Colling- 

y  V     ham  said,  with  faint  indignation  in  his 

tone,  "is  whether  you're  a  married  man  or  not." 

"I'm  a  married  man,  father,  all  right." 

"Then  why  don't  you  live  like  a  married 
man?  I  suppose  you  know  that  people  are 
saying  all  sorts  of  things." 

Bob  considered  the  simplest  way  in  which  to 
put  his  case.  It  was  the  afternoon  of  the  day 
following  the  end  of  Teddy's  trial,  and  his  father 
was  giving  him  a  lift  homeward  from  the  bank. 
It  being  winter,  dark  was  already  closing  in,  and 
though  they  were  out  of  the  city,  great  arc-lights 
were  still  strung  along  the  roadways,  which  were 
otherwise  lighted  by  flashes  from  hundreds  of 
motor  cars. 

"I've  never  said  anything  about  this  before," 
the  father  resumed,  before  Bob  had  found  the 
right  words,  "because  we'd  all  agreed — your 
mother,  Edith,  and  myself — that  we  wouldn't 
hamper  you  with  questions  about  it  while  you 
were  busy  with  something  else.  But  now  that 
that's  over — " 

"Part  of  it  is  over,  but  only  part  of  it.  We've 
a  long  road  to  travel  yet." 

"If  the  appeal  is  denied,  as  I  expect  it  will  be, 
416 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

you'll  have  to  let  me  in  on  the  application  to  the 
Governor  for  clemency.  I  think  I'd  have  some 
influence  there." 

"Thanks,  dad.  That'll  be  a  help."  He 
asked,  after  further  thinking,  "Should  you  like 
me  to  live  as  a  married  man — considering  who 
it  is  I've  married?" 

Knowing  that  the  question  was  a  searching 
one,  Bob  found  the  reply  much  what  he  expected. 

"I  want  to  see  the  best  thing  come  out  of  a 
mixed-up  situation.  I  don't  deny  that  all  these 
problems  bother  me;  but  we  have  them  on  our 
hands,  and  so  there's  no  more  to  be  said.  We've 
got  to  find  the  wise  thing  to  do,  and  do  it.  That's 
all  I'm  after." 

"That's  all  I'm  after,  myself,  dad." 

"I  don't  admit  any  responsibility  for  all  this 
muss,"  Collingham  declared,  as  if  his  son  had 
accused  him.  "I  don't  care  what  anyone  thinks; 
my  conscience  is  clear." 

"Of  course,  dad;  of  course!" 

"But  since  things  have  happened  as  they 
have,  I'd  like  to  make  them  as  easy  as  I  can  for 
everyone;  and  whatever  money  can  do — " 

"Or  recognition?" 

They  came  back  to  the  original  question. 

"Yes;  recognition,  too — as  soon  as  we've 
anyone  to  recognize.  What  I  don't  understand 
is  all  this  backing  and  filling — " 

"Have  you  asked  mother?" 

"In  a  way;  and  she's  just  as  mysterious  as 
you." 

417 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Bob  tried  another  avenue. 

"You  saw  Jennie  yourself,  didn't  you?" 

"Once;  yes." 

"What  did  you  think  of  her?" 

"What  any  man  would  think  of  her.  She  was 
very  charming  and — and  appealing." 

"Did  you  think  anything  else?" 

The  father  turned  sharply. 

"What  makes  you  ask?" 

"  Because  it's  possible  you  did." 

"Well,  I  did.     What  of  it?" 

"Only  this — that  that's  the  thing  I  want  to 
nail  before  I  bring  her  to  you  as  my  wife." 

"Then  why  don't  you  go  to  work  and  nail  it?" 

He  found  the  words  he  was  in  search  of. 

"Partly  because  I've  other  things  to  do; 
partly  because  I  feel  that,  by  giving  it  its  time, 
it  will  nail  itself;  and,  most  of  all,  for  the  reason 
that  neither  she  nor  I  want  to  take  the — the 
great  happiness  which  we  feel  is  coming  to  us  in 
the  end  while — while  all  this  other  thing  is  in 
the  air.  I  wonder  if  you  understand  me." 

"More  or  less." 

"It's  as  if  we'd  accidentally  put  the  cart  of 
marriage  before  the  horse  of  engagement.  Do 
you  see?  Nominally  we're  married;  but  really 
we're  only  engaged.  We  can't  be  married — we 
don't  want  to  be  married — till  other  things  are 
off  our  minds." 

With  this  bit  of  explanation,  the  Collinghams 
began  to  live  once  more  as  if  nothing  had  oc- 
curred. It  was  not  easy;  but  by  dint  of  skim- 

418 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ming  on  the  surface  they  were  able  to  manage  it. 
That  is  to  say,  Bob  came  and  went,  and  they 
asked  him  no  more  questions,  while  on  his  part 
he  continued  to  nerve  Teddy  and  his  sisters  for 
another  test. 

If  there  was  anyone  noticeably  different,  it 
was  Junia.  Always  quick  to  tack  according  to 
the  wind,  she  seemed  almost  to  have  changed  her 
course.  In  putting  the  best  face  on  Edith's 
marriage  and  Bob's  complications  she  had 
adopted  the  new  ideals  that  kept  her  in  the 
movement. 

"It's  the  war,"  she  explained  to  her  intimates. 
"We're  all  different.  Life  as  we  used  to  live  it 
begins  to  seem  so  empty.  We  weren't  real;  we 
people  who  spent  our  time  entertaining  and  being 
entertained.  It's  all  very  well  to  say  that  we're 
much  the  same  since  the  war  as  we  were  before, 
but  it  isn't  so.  I  know  I'm  not.  I'm  quite  a 
revolutionist.  I  may  not  have  made  much 
progress,  but  I'm  certainly  more  in  touch  with 
reality." 

With  this  transition,  it  became  natural  to 
speak  of  her  son-in-law. 

"Such  a  wonderful  fellow — all  mind,  you 
know,*  but  the  type  that  helps  so  many  of  us  to 
find  our  way  through  the  mists  of  materialism 
and  selfishness  out  to  the  great  big  ends.  To 
me,  it's  like  a  new  life  just  to  hear  him  talk,  and 
I  can't  help  feeling  it  providential  that  he's 
found  a  wife  like  Edith.  She's  an  extraordinary 
girl  to  be  my  child — intellectual  and  practical 

419 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

at  once.  She  can  keep  her  husband  company  in 
all  his  researches  and  yet  cook  him  a  good 
dinner  if  their  little  maid  is  out.  Is  there  any- 
thing so  astonishing  in  life  as  our  own  children 
and  what  they  turn  out  to  be?" 

This  was  a  transition,  too,  leading  her  to  speak 
of  Bob's  affairs  in  the  tone  of  one  who,  though 
puzzled,  takes  them  sympathetically. 

"And  yet  I  think  it's  enlarging.  Though 
we've  kept  only  on  the  outer  edge  of  the  drama 
through  which  Bob  has  been  going  with  the  girl 
he's  married,  the  whole  thing  has  deepened  his 
life  so  much  that  it  couldn't  help  deepening  ours. 
It's  broadened  us,  too,  I  think,  giving  us  an  in- 
sight into  lives  so  different  from  our  own.  That's 
what  we  need  so  much,  it  seems  to  me,  that  kind 
of  broadening.  It's  going  to  solve  a  lot  of  our 
national  problems  which  at  present  seem  to  be 
insoluble.  Yes;  Bob  is  still  at  home  with  us, 
and  I  tell  you  frankly  that  I  don't  know  what  is 
coming  out  of  it.  It's  all  so  queer  and  inde- 
pendent and  modern.  I'm  old-fashioned,  and  I 
don't  pretend  to  see  through  these  young  people's 
ways.  But  I'm  Bob's  mother,  and  through  all 
his  developments — and  he  is  developing — I'm 
going  with  him." 

So  Junia  talked,  and  talked  so  much  that  she 
was  in  danger  of  talking  herself  round.  The 
instinct  to  be  in  the  front  line  of  fashion  had 
something  to  do  with  it,  but  self-persuasion  had 
more.  The  thing  of  the  hour  being  the  throwing 
over  of  the  old  social  code,  Junia  wouldn't  have 

420 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

been  Junia  if  she  hadn't  done  it;  but,  even  so, 
the  creeping-in  of  compunction  toward  Bob  took 
her  by  surprise.  She  had  told  herself  hither- 
to that  she  loved  him  so  much  that  she  would 
work  for  his  permanent  happiness  even  at  the 
cost  of  his  temporary  pain;  but  now  she  began 
to  fear  that  what  had  seemed  to  her  his  temporary 
pain  might  prove  the  very  life  of  his  life. 

She  came  to  this  perception  through  reading 
in  the  newspapers  the  accounts  of  the  Follett 
boy's  trial.  By  the  tacit  convention  which  the 
Collinghams  had  established,  that  they  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it,  she  never  spoke  of  it  to 
Bradley  or  Edith,  nor  did  they  speak  of  it  to 
her;  but  she  kept  herself  informed,  and  knew  the 
devotion  with  which  Bob  gave  himself  to  Jennie 
and  her  family.  The  boy's  condemnation  hit 
her  hard.  When  Bradley  came  home  that  night, 
she  saw  that  it  had  also  hit  him. 

"I'm  worth  about  five  million  dollars  at  a 
guess,"  he  confided  to  her,  "and  I'd  cheerfully 
have  given  four  of  them  if  this  thing  hadn't 
happened." 

"But,  Bradley  dear,  you  had  nothing  to  do 
with  it." 

"I  know  I  hadn't,"  he  declared,  savagely; 
"and  yet  I'd— I'd  do  as  I  say." 

But  it  wasn't  Bradley  she  was  most  sorry 
for;  nor  was  it  for  the  Follett  boy.  She  was 
sorry  that,  because  of  conditions  which  she  her- 
self had  fostered,  Bob  would  never  reap  the  fruit 
of  a  love  in  which  he  had  been  so  chivalrous.  She 

421 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

didn't  see  how  he  could.  Just  as  there  was  a 
natural  Bradley  and  a  standardized  one,  so  there 
was  a  natural  and  a  standardized  Junia.  The 
natural  Junia  had  long  seemed  dead;  but  the 
bigness  of  the  love  which  she  saw  daily  and  hourly 
exemplified  moved  her  to  the  painful  stirrings  of 
new  life. 

Meanwhile  Bob  went  with  Teddy  up  the  re- 
maining steps  by  which  he  mounted  his  Calvary. 

He  stood  near  the  cage  on  the  morning  when 
the  boy  was  brought  up  for  sentence,  witnessing 
his  coolness.  On  being  asked  if  he  had  anything 
to  say  before  sentence  was  pronounced  he 
replied : 

"Nothing,  sir,  except  to  thank  you  for  giving 
me  such  a  fair  trial." 

The  words  were  spoken  in  a  firmer  voice  than 
those  which  followed: 

"The  court,  in  consideration  of  your  crime  of 
murder  in  the  first  degree,  sentences  you  to  the 
punishment  of  death  by  the  passage  of  a  current 
of  electricity  through  your  body,  within  the 
week  beginning  .  .  ." 

When  the  appeal  for  a  new  trial  was  denied, 
it  was  Bob  who  informed  Teddy.  When  all 
efforts  to  obtain  Executive  clemency  had  failed, 
it  was  Bob  again  who  broke  the  news.  When 
the  boy  requested  that  his  mother  and  sisters 
should  omit  their  next  visit  to  Bitterwell — 
should  wait  till  he  sent  them  word  before  coming 
again — it  was  Bob  who  conveyed  the  request. 

422 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Bitterwell,  the  great  penitentiary,  was  twenty 
miles  from  Pemberton  Heights,  and  through  the 
winter  they  had  gone  to  see  him  some  thirty-odd 
times.  They  went  in  couples.  Gladys  and  her 
mother,  Jennie  and  Gussie,  keeping  each  other 
company.  The  visits  were  less  difficult  than 
might  have  been  expected  because  of  Teddy's 
cheerfulness. 

Of  the  request  to  wait  before  coming  again, 
they  didn't  at  first  seize  the  significance.  While 
frank  with  them  about  everything  else,  Bob  had 
never  given  them  the  date  of  the  week  the  judge 
had  named,  nor  had  they  asked  for  it.  If  they 
did  so  ask,  he  meant  to  tell  them;  but  they 
seemed  to  divine  his  intention. 

Perhaps  they  divined  the  intention  in  this 
intimation  from  Teddy.  At  any  rate,  they  didn't 
question  it,  or  rebel  against  it.  It  followed  on 
visits  first  of  one  pair  and  then  of  the  other,  both 
of  which  had  been  so  normal  as  almost  to  pass  as 
gay.  That  is,  Teddy's  spirits  had  infected  theirs, 
and  they  had  parted  from  him  smiling.  That  of 
Jennie  and  Gussie  had  been  the  first  of  the  two, 
and  he  had  sent  them  off  with  a  joke. 

"My  boy,  I'm  proud  of  you,"  had  been 
Lizzie's  farewell  words  to  him.  "Walk  firmly, 
with  your  head  erect,  and  never,  never  be  sorry 
for  anything  you've  done." 

"Good  old  ma!  The  best  ever!  I  sure  am 
proud  of  you!  What  '11  you  bet  that  we  don't 
have  some  good  times  together  yet?" 

A  psychologist  would  have  said  that  by  sug- 
28  423 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

gestion  and  autosuggestion  they  strengthened 
each  other  and  themselves;  but  whatever  the 
process,  the  result  was  evident.  Bob  had  given 
them  the  verb  "to  carry  on,"  so  that  "carrying 
on"  became  at  once  an  objective  and  a  driving 
force.  Gussie  and  Gladys  went  regularly  to 
work;  Jennie  took  care  of  the  house  and  her 
mother.  The  latter  task  had  become  the  more 
imperative,  for  the  reason  that,  after  Teddy's 
request  that  they  should  suspend  their  visits, 
she  began  to  fail.  It  was  not  that  she  was  hurt 
by  it,  but  rather  that  she  took  it  as  a  signal. 

In  the  efforts  to  be  strong,  they  were  helped 
by  the  fact  that,  not  long  after  Teddy's  removal 
to  Bitterwell,  Edith  Ayling  had  come  to  see  them, 
all  of  her  own  initiative.  She  had  repeated  the 
visit  many  times,  and  had  Gussie  and  Gladys 
go  to  see  her  at  Cathedral  Heights.  Jennie  had 
never  been  able  to  leave  home. 

"I  didn't  say  anything  about  it  to  you,"  Edith 
explained  to  Bob,  after  the  occasion  of  her 
breaking  the  ice,  "because  I  wanted  to  do  it  on 
my  own.  Quite  apart  from  you  and  Jennie,  I 
feel  that  our  lots  have  become  involved  and 
that  we  Collinghams  have  some  responsibility. 
I  don't  say  responsibility  for  what,  because  I 
don't  know;  and  yet  I  feel — "  Unable  to  say 
what  she  felt,  she  elided  to  the  personal.  "Jennie 
I  don't  get  at.  She's  so  silent — so  shut  away. 
The  mother  has  never  been  well  enough  to  see 
me.  But  the  two  younger  girls  I'm  really  getting 
to  know  very  well  and  to  be  very  fond  of. 
424 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

They're  intelligent  down  to  the  fingertips,  and 
with  a  little  guidance  Fm  sure  they  could  do  big 
things." 

"What  kind  of  things?" 

"I  should  train  Gladys  along  intellectual 
lines,  and  Gussie  was  born  for  the  stage.  I  know 
that  Ernest  and  I  could  help  them,  if  you  thought 
it  all  right,  and  we  should  love  doing  it.  You 
must  read  what  he  says  in  his  new  book,  Salvage, 
as  to  getting  people  into  the  tasks  for  which  they 
are  fitted  and  in  which  they  can  be  happy.  He 
thinks  that  a  lot  of  our  nonproductiveness 
comes  from  the  people  who'd  love  doing  one 
thing  being  compelled  to  do  another,  and  that  if 
we  could  only  help  the  individuals  we  come 
across  to  find  their  natural  jobs  .  .  ." 

It  was  Edith  also  who  unconsciously  helped 
her  mother  out  of  the  trap  in  which  she  had 
found  herself  caught. 

"Oh,  by  the  way,  whom  do  you  think  I  met  in 
the  street  the  other  day?  No  less  a  person  than 
Hubert  Wray,  just  back  from  California.  And 
that  reminds  me.  He  told  me  you  had  bought 
his  big  picture  that  everyone  was  talking  about 
last  year.  Where  is  it?  Why  did  you  never 
say  anything  about  it?" 

Edith  was  spending  a  day  in  May  at  Colling- 
ham  Lodge,  and  was  walking  with  her  mother 
between  rows  of  irises. 

"Come  in,"  Junia  said.  "I'll  show  you. 
Then  you'll  understand." 

But  not  till  "Life  and  Death"  had  been  drawn 
425 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

from  its  hiding  place  and  propped  against  the 
wall  was  Edith  allowed  to  enter  her  mother's 
room.  She  advanced  slowly,  her  eyes  on  the 
canvas.  Junia  waited  for  the  shock. 

"So  that's  it,"  Edith  said,  at  last.  "It  isn't  a 
thing  I  should  want  to  live  and  die  with — I  never 
can  understand  that  fancy  people  have  for  nudes 
— but  I  see  it's  very  fine." 

"And  is  that  all  you  see?" 

"All  I  see?    I  see  it  has  a  meaning,  of  course, 

but—'; 

Junia's  throat  felt  dry. 

"Don't  you — don't  you  recognize  anybody?" 

"Who?  The  Brasshead  woman?  I  shouldn't 
know  her  from  Eve." 

Junia  crept  nearer. 

' *  The  Brasshead  woman '  ?   Who's  she  ?   What 
are  you  talking  about?" 

"Why,  the  model  who  sat  for  it.  Hubert  told 
me  all  about  her.  He  said  she  wasn't  his  ideal 
for  the  part — rather  a  poor  lot  as  a  woman — but 
he  couldn't  get  anyone  better."  She  added,  on 
examining  the  features,  "I  don't  think  she's 
bad,  considering  what  he  wanted." 

"Doesn't  she — doesn't  she  remind  you  of — 
of  Bob's  wife?" 

"About  as  much  as  she  does  of  you.  Surely 
that's  not  the  reason  why  you  hid  the  thing  away !' ' 

"I — I  did  think — I  was  afraid — that  people 
might  see  a  resemblance — " 

Edith  made  an  inarticulate  sound  intended  for 
derision. 

426 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,  Hubert  said  it  was 
probably  a  good  thing  for  him  to  be  obliged  to 
paint  some  one  else  than  Jennie.  He'd  been 
painting  her  so  much  that  he  was  in  danger  of 
painting  her  into  everything,  like  Andrea  del 
Sarto  with  his  wife." 

"Then  you — you  don't  think  that  he's  painted 
her  in  here?" 

Edith  looked  again. 

"Well,  if  you  put  it  that  way — and  you  were 
crazy  to  find  a  likeness — perhaps  about  the 
brows — and  down  here  at  the  curve  of  the  cheek 
and  neck — but  no!  Not  really!  This  is  a 
carnal  woman,  and  Jennie's  a  thing  of  the 
spirit."  She  dismissed  the  subject  as  of  no 
further  importance.  "Do  tell  me.  Is  there 
anyone  in  New  York  who  reglazes  these  English 
chintzes?" 

So  Junia  made  new  plans,  waiting  for  Bob  to 
come  home  to  dinner  in  order  to  meet  him  on  the 
threshold,  throw  her  arms  about  his  neck,  and 
give  him  the  glad  facts. 

But  Bob  sent  a  telephone  message  that  he 
would  not  be  home  to  dinner,  that  he  would  not 
be  home  that  night.  No  one  was  to  worry,  and 
he  would  turn  up  at  breakfast  in  the  morning. 

It  was  all  the  information  he  gave  because, 
by  special  permission  from  the  warden,  and  under 
a  solemn  promise  not  to  convey  anything  to  the 
prisoner  that  would  enable  him  to  cheat  the 
law,  he  was  spending  the  night  at  Bitterwell. 

He  was  spending  it  in  a  low  one-storied  build- 
427 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

ing  some  sixty  feet  long  and  not  more  than 
twenty  in  width.  Its  arrangements  were  simple. 
On  entering,  you  came  into  a  corridor  some  six 
feet  wide,  running  the  length  of  seven  little 
rooms.  The  seven  little  rooms  were  each  fur- 
nished with  a  cot,  a  fixed  wash-basin,  a  table, 
and  a  chair.  Each  had,  however,  this  peculi- 
arity— that  the  end  toward  the  corridor  had  no 
wall.  Instead  of  a  wall  it  had  long,  strong  per- 
pendicular white  bars,  some  two  or  three  inches 
apart,  and  running  from  ceiling  to  floor.  The 
inmate  was  thus  visible  at  all  times,  like  an 
animal  in  a  cage.  In  the  corridor  were  half  a 
dozen  chairs  of  the  kitchen  variety,  and  at  the 
end  a  little  yellow  door. 

The  little  yellow  door  led  into  a  room  of  which 
the  chief  piece  of  furniture  was  a  chair  vaguely 
suggestive  of  an  armchair(  in  a  smoking  room, 
though  with  some  singular  attachments.  Around 
it  in  a  semicircle  were  some  eight  or  ten  other 
chairs  similar  to  those  in  the  corridor.  In  one 
corner  was  a  walled-off  space  that  might  have 
housed  a  dynamo;  in  the  other  a  stack  of  brooms 
and  mops.  As  a  passageway  gave  access  to  this 
room,  and  the  yellow  door  was  carefully  kept 
closed,  Bob  was  not  required  to  see  within. 

Of  the  seven  little  rooms  four  were  empty, 
and  three  had  occupants.  At  one  end  was  a 
negro;  at  the  other  an  Italian;  Teddy  was  in  the 
center.  Outside,  there  was  a  guard  for  the 
Italian,  another  for  the  negro,  while  for  Teddy 
there  were  two.  They  were  big,  husky  fellows, 

428 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

three  Irishmen  and  a  Swede,  genial,  good-natured 
souls  to  whom  their  duties  had  become  a  matter 
of  course. 

There  was  something  of  the  matter  of  course 
in  the  whole  situation,  even  to  Teddy  and 
Bob.  The  human  mind  being  ready  to  accept 
anything  to  which  it  is  led  by  steps  sufficiently 
graded,  both  young  men  were  attuned  to  finding 
themselves  as  they  were.  As  they  were  meant 
that  Teddy  clung  to  one  of  the  bars  from  within, 
and  Bob  to  the  same  bar  from  without.  They 
talked  through  the  open  spaces,  being  able  to  do 
it  quietly  because  they  were  so  close. 

"You  don't  think  I'm  afraid,  do  you,  Bob? 
I  should  have  been  afraid  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
you.  You've  bucked  me  up  something — well, 
there  are  no  words  for  it." 

"Let  it  go  without  words,  Teddy.  Don't  try 
to  say  it." 

"I  like  to  say  it,"  he  grinned.  "Or,  rather, 
I'd  like  to  say  it  if  I  could.  I  like  trying  to  say 
it,  even  when  I  can't." 

That  was  all  for  the  time;  but  after  some 
minutes,  Teddy's  hand  stole  over  Bob's  big  paw 
as  it  held  to  the  bar,  so  that  they  held  to  it 
together. 

It  was  Bob  who  broke  the  silence  next. 

"I  didn't  tell  you,  Teddy — I've  only  just  found 
it  out — that  dad's  been  taking  care  of  Mrs.  Flynn 
and  her  kiddies  and  means  to  go  on  doing  it." 

"That's  good,"  the  boy  sighed.  "It  takes 
about  the  last  thing  off  my  mind." 

429 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

So  they  talked  spasmodically,  never  saying 
much,  and  yet  saying  all  the  things  for  which 
language  has  no  words.  At  intervals  the  Italian 
showed  his  sympathy  by  groaning  heavily,  which 
was  generally  a  signal  for  the  negro  to  begin 
singing,  in  a  cottony  voice,  the  first  verse  of 
"Safe  in  the  Arms  of  Jesus."  Teddy  apologized 
for  them  as  a  host  for  unseemly  members  of  his 
household. 

"They're  good  guys,  all  right.  That's  just 
their  way  of  letting  me  know  they  feel  for  me. 
It's  funny  how  kind  hearted  some  mutt  will  be 
who's  committed  a  cold-blooded  murder." 

He  had  probably  been  following  this  train  of 
thought  for  some  minutes  when  he  said,  in  a 
reasoning  tone: 

"What  can  the  law  do  with  fellows  of  our  sort  ? 
Look  at  the  thing  straight  now.  We've  got  good 
in  us,  of  course;  but  you  can't  trust  us  to  hold 
our  horses.  I  don't  blame  them  for  what  they're 
giving  me — hardly  any.  Only,  I'll  be  darned  if 
it  doesn't  make  me  surer  that  all  this  is  only  an 
experiment — a  way  of  finding  out  how  not  to  do 
it — so  that  we  can  make  the  next  go  a  better 
one." 

They  discussed  this  topic  in  a  desultory  way, 
not  so  much  letting  it  drop  as  pursuing  it  each  in 
his  own  thought.  Teddy  picked  up  the  line  again 
after  an  interval  of  time,  and  some  distance 
farther  on. 

"I  suppose  you  can't  believe  that  you  come  to 
a  place  where  you  know  you're  through  and  are 

430 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

in  a  hurry  to  get  on.  Well,  you  do.  I  guess  old 
people  like  ma  reach  there,  anyhow;  and  young 
people,  too,  when  they're — when  they're  like  me. 
I've  had  my  shot — and  I've  miffed  it.  Now  I'm 
all  on  edge  to  have  another  try.  I'm  so  crazy 
about  that  that  the  thing  that's  to  happen  first 
doesn't  seem  anything — very  much." 

The  hours  wore  on,  but  it  seemed  to  Bob  a 
night  to  which  there  was  no  time.  Though  the 
support  he  brought  to  Teddy  was  merely  that  of 
companionship,  he  felt  that  the  boy  was  out- 
stripping him.  In  Teddy's  own  phrase,  he  was 
"moving  on,"  but  moving  on  very  fast.  Bob 
couldn't  tell  how  he  knew  this;  he  only  felt  him- 
self being  left  behind.  Teddy  was  quite  right; 
his  old  experiment  was  over,  and  some  of  the 
exaltation  of  the  new  one  was  already  breaking 
through.  That  was  the  meaning  of  his  silences, 
his  abstractions.  That  was  why  he  came  out  of 
each  such  spell  with  a  smile  that  grew  more 
luminous. 

The  Italian  and  the  negro  fell  asleep.  The 
four  guards  talked  less  to  one  another.  Clutching 
the  bar  grew  tiring.  Brannigan,  one  of  Teddy's 
guards,  brought  up  a  chair,  offering  it  to  Bob. 

"Why  don't  you  sit  down?  It  '11  be  quite  a 
while  yet." 

Bob  took  the  chair,  Teddy  the  one  inside  the 
cell.  Bringing  it  as  close  to  the  bars  as  possible, 
he  thrust  his  fingers  through  the  opening  to 
touch  Bob's  hand.  Bob  closed  the  fingers  within 
his  palm,  and  so  held  them. 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"I'm  not  going  to  send  any  message  to  ma  and 
the  girls.  They  know  I  love  them.  You  can't 
add  anything  to  that."  A  sidelong  smile  stole 
through  the  bars.  "I  love  you  too,  Bob.  I  guess 
it's  a  bum  thing  to  say,  but  to-night — well,  it's 
different — and  I'm  going  to  say  it.  I  can't  do 
anything  to  thank  you;  but  it  may  mean  some- 
thing to  you  to  have  me  loving  you  like  the  devil 
all  the  way  from — from  over  there." 

"It  means  something  to  me  now." 

"Then  that's  all  right." 

The  Italian  breathed  heavily.  The  negro 
snored.  The  guards  were  bored  and  somnolent. 
Teddy  might  have  been  asleep  except  for  the  look 
and  the  smile  that  every  now  and  then  crept 
through  the  bars  toward  his  companion. 

Suddenly  he  pulled  his  fingers  from  Bob's 
clasp,  jumped  to  his  feet,  and  held  out  his  arms. 

"All  right,  ma!     I'm  ready!" 

The  cry  was  so  loud  and  joyous  that  Bob 
sprang  up.  Brannigan  lumbered  forward. 

"Been  dreamin',"  he  explained.  "Just  as  well 
if  he  has." 

Teddy  looked  about  him  in  bewilderment. 

"No,  I  haven't  been.  I  wasn't  asleep.  I 
was  wide  awake.  I  guess  you'll  think  I'm  dippy, 
Bob;  but  I  did  see  ma.  'Pon  my  soul  I  did! 
She  was  right  there."  He  pointed  to  the  spot. 
"She  looked  lovely, too — young,  like — and  yet  it 
was  ma  all  right.  She  wanted  me  to  come. 
That's  why  I  jumped.  Oh,  well!  Perhaps  I  am 
dippy.  But  it's  funny,  isn't  it?" 

43* 


"ALL  RIGHT,  MA!     I'M  READY!" 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

He  was  so  preoccupied  with  this  happening  as 
not  to  notice  sounds  in  the  outer  passage  and 
beyond  the  yellow  door.  Even  when  he  did,  it 
was  with  no  more  than  a  partial  cognizance. 

" Listen!'*  he  said  once.  "There  they  are. 
It  'li  be  only  a  few  minutes  now.  I'm  not  going 
to  let  you  go  in  there,  Bob.  Funny  about  ma, 
isn't  it?" 

The  sounds  grew  louder.  The  guards  were 
moving  about.  Behind  the  yellow  door  people 
seemed  to  enter.  There  was  the  scraping  of 
chairs  as  they  sat  down.  The  Italian  woke  and 
howled  dismally.  The  negro  shouted  his  hymn. 
Teddy  was  far  away  on  the  wings  of  speculation; 
but  he  came  back  to  say: 

"If  ma  had  gone  ahead  of  me,  I  know  she'd 
like  nothing  better  than  to  come  and  give  me  a 
lift  over.  But  she  hasn't  gone  ahead  of  me. 
She's  over  there  in  Indiana  Avenue.  That's  the 
funny  part  of  it.  What  do  you  suppose  it  means  ? " 

Bob  didn't  know.  Neither  had  he  time  to 
offer  an  opinion,  because  the  main  door  opened 
and  the  warden  appeared,  accompanied  by  the 
chaplain,  the  doctor,  the  principal  keeper,  and 
three  other  men  whom  Teddy  didn't  know. 

"Here  they  are!"  Teddy  whispered,  as  if  their 
coming  was  a  relief. 

The  warden  advanced  to  the  central  cell. 
The  door  was  unlocked.  Teddy  stood  on  the 
threshold. 

"Thank  you,  warden.  I  suppose  I  can  say 
good-by  to  my  friend?" 

433 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

Permission  was  given.  Teddy  stepped  out 
into  the  corridor. 

"You'd  better  go  now,  Bob.  No  use  in  your 
staying  any  longer.'*  He  nodded  toward  the 
men  standing  round  him.  "They'll  handle  me 
gently.  I'm  not  afraid.'* 

Their  hands  clasped;  but  the  boy  was  only  a 
boy,  loving  and  in  need  of  love.  Before  Bob 
knew  what  was  happening,  Teddy's  arms  were 
about  his  neck,  in  a  long,  desperate  embrace. 

A  gulp  that  was  almost  a  sob  from  each — and 
it  was  over. 

"All  right,  boys.    I'm  ready.    Go  to  it." 

The  words  were  spoken  steadily.  Bob  limped 
toward  the  door.  A  guard  unlocked  it. 

"Say,  Bob!"  It  was  Teddy's  voice  again. 
Bob  turned.  The  lad  had  taken  off  his  collar, 
no  more  conscious  of  the  act  than  if  he  was 
going  to  bed.  One  of  the  strange  men  was 
kneeling  on  one  knee,  making  a  significant  slit 
in  a  leg  of  Teddy's  trousers.  "Say,  Bob!  I 
wonder — if  it  doesn't  take  you  too  far  out  of  your 
way — if  you'd  mind  driving  round  by  the  house? 
You  see,  if  anything  has  happened  to  ma,  why, 
the  girls  '11  be  all  up  in  the  air,  poor  things!" 

Bob  nodded  because  he  couldn't  trust  himself 
to  words — and  so  it  was  the  end. 

Out  in  the  air  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  he  had 
dreamed  and  waked  up.  The  May  night  was  so 
exquisite,  so  hallowing,  that  the  walls  of  Bitter- 
well  were  mellow  and  enchanted  against  the  dome 

434 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

of  stars.  Even  in  these  grim  courts  the  scent  of 
growing  things  was  sweet. 

Driving  in  the  deadest  hours  of  night  over  the 
long  flat  road,  he  was  too  tired  to  think.  His 
imagination  didn't  try  to  follow  Teddy,  because 
it  had  become  an  instinct  to  spring  to  the  need 
to  "carry  on."  Teddy  was  behind  him.  There 
were  other  things  in  front;  and  his  mind  was 
already  with  them. 

And  yet  not  actively.  After  he  had  slept  he 
would  be  able  to  take  them  up;  but  just  now  his 
main  desire  was  to  get  home  to  bed.  Nothing 
but  that  would  dispel  this  overweight  of  emotion. 

Along  the  familiar  road  he  drove  mechanically. 
Even  Teddy's  last  request,  though  it  formed  an 
intention,  was  hardly  in  his  mind.  At  Bond's 
Corner,  where  the  roads  forked,  to  the  right  to 
Pemberton  Heights,  to  the  left  to  the  bridge  that 
would  take  him  over  toward  Marillo,  he  was  so 
nearly  asleep  that  he  might  have  gone  straight 
on  homeward  had  he  not  been  startled  by  seeing 
a  man  and  a  woman  standing  in  the  middle  of 
the  road. 

He  jammed  down  the  service  and  emergency 
brakes,  swinging  to  the  right.  The  fact  that  they 
stood  facing  him  without  getting  out  of  his  way 
both  amazed  him  and  rendered  him  indignant. 
Turning  to  look  at  so  strange  a  pair  of  pedestri- 
ans, he  saw — Teddy  and  his  mother. 

They  were  not  quite  on  the  road,  but  a  little 
above  it.  Neither  were  they  in  the  dark  like 
other  things  around,  but  shining  with  a  light  of 

435 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

their  own.  Neither  were  they  shadowy  appari- 
tions, but  definite,  vital,  forcible.  They  were 
dressed  as  he  had  generally  seen  them,  and  yet 
they  wore  a  kind  of  radiance.  The  mother's  arm 
was  over  her  boy's  shoulder,  but  Teddy  was 
waving  his  hand.  Smiles  were  on  both  faces, 
on  the  lips,  in  the  eyes,  and  somehow  in  the 
personality. 

Bob  was  not  frightened,  but  he  was  thrilled. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  they  stayed  long  enough 
to  overcome  all  the  doubts  of  his  senses.  Though 
he  pressed  on  the  brakes,  the  car  went  a  number 
of  yards  before  he  could  bring  it  to  a  standstill; 
and  yet  they  never  left  his  side.  They  didn't 
exactly  move;  they  were  only  there — living, 
lovely,  sending  out  love  as  if  it  had  been  light, 
wrapping  him  round  and  round.  It  was  so  vivid, 
so  much  a  fact,  that  when  the  car  stopped  and  he 
saw  no  one  there,  he  was  amazed  once  more  to 
find  himself  alone. 

He  couldn't  drive  on  at  once.  He  lingered— 
staring  at  the  spot  where  they  had  stood,  looking 
over  the  wide,  dim  country,  gazing  up  at  the 
stars  in  their  yearning  infinitude.  He  tried  to 
persuade  himself  that  his  own  mind  had  pro- 
jected something  unreal  in  itself;  but  he  couldn't 
throw  off  the  extraordinary  happiness  the  vision 
left  behind  it. 

Before  reaching  Indiana  Avenue  he  had  de- 
cided on,  a  course.  If  there  were  no  lights  in 
the  house,  he  would  drive  on  homeward.  If 
there  were  he  would  stop.  At  this  hour  in  the 

436 


THE   EMPTY  SACK 

very  early  morning,   unless  something  unusual 
had  happened,  there  would  of  course  be  none. 

But  there  were  lights.  At  sound  of  his  ap- 
proach, Pansy  gave  a  little  silvery  yelp.  Jennie 
opened  the  door  before  he  had  time  to  ring. 

"Come  in,  Bob.  I  saw  your  car  from  the 
window." 

In  the  living-room  Gussie  and  Gladys,  wearing 
their  dressing-gowns,  cried  out  their  relief  at 
seeing  him.  It  was  the  situation  Teddy  had  fore- 
seen, in  which  they  were  all  "up  in  the  air."  As 
usual,  Gladys  was  the  spokesman. 

"Oh,  Bob,  we're  so  glad  to  have  you.  We 
didn't  know  what  to  do.  Momma — " 

A  sob  stopped  her,  but  Jennie  was  more  calm. 

"Momma's  gone,  Bob.  Gussie  went  into  her 
room  about  half  past  ten  to  take  her  the  glass 
of  milk  we  always  put  by  her  bed,  and  she  was 
asleep." 

They  gathered  round  him  as  if  he  formed  their 
rallying  point.  He  took  Jennie  and  Gussie  each 
by  the  hand.  Gladys  held  his  coat  by  the  lapel. 

"You're  not  sorry,  any  of  you,  are  you?  She 
wanted  to  go;  and  she's  gone  in  the  sweetest  of 
all  ways." 

"She  won't  have  to  hear  about  Teddy,"  Gussie 
Wept.  "That's  a  comfort,  anyhow." 

Gladys  laid  her  head  against  Bob's  breast. 

"No;  but  Teddy '11  have  to  hear  about  her." 

Bob    saw    the    opportunity.      "No,    Gladys; 
Teddy  will  not  have  to  hear  about  her."     He 
let  this  sink  in.     "Teddy — knows." 
437 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

It  was  some  seconds  before  Jennie  and  Gussie 
released  his  hands  and  Gladys  let  go  his  lapel. 
When  they  did  they  moved  away  silently. 
Gussie  dropped  on  her  knees  at  the  arm  of  a  big 
chair,  bowing  her  head,  and  crying  quietly. 
Jennie,  a  slim  figure  with  hands  behind  her  back, 
walked  down  the  length  of  the  room,  staring  at 
the  curtained  window  toward  Indiana  Avenue. 
Gladys  stood  off,  looking  at  Bob,  nodding  her 
head  sagely,  as  she  said: 

"I  thought  that's  what  it  meant  when  he 
didn't  want  us  to  come.  He  liked  it  better  with- 
out saying  good-by.  So  we  all  do."  She  gave  a 
big,  sudden  sob,  controlling  herself  as  suddenly. 
"We're  going  to  carry  on,  Bob.  We're  not  going 
to  show  the  white  feather" — there  was  another 
big  sob,  with  another  successful  effort  to  keep 
it  back — "we're  not  going  to  show  the  white 
feather — any  of  us — just  to  please  you." 

"Thank  you,  Gladys.  It  will  please  me. 
But  there's  something  that  pleases  me  more. 
I'd  like  to  tell  all  three  of  you  about  it." 

Jennie  turned  round  from  the  window,  coming 
back  down  the  room.  She  was  pale,  but  she 
didn't  cry.  Gussie  dried  her  eyes  and  was  strug- 
gling to  her  feet  when  Bob  laid  his  hand  on  her 
shoulder. 

"No,  Gussie;  stay  where  you  are.  I'll  sit 
down  here."  He  dropped  into  the  chair.  "You 
come  on  this  side,  Jennie.  Gladys — " 

But  Gladys  had  already  crouched  at  his  feet, 
while  Jennie,  balancing  Gussie,  sank  beside  the 

438 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

other  arm  of  the  chair.  Pansy  sprang  up  to  her 
place  on  his  knee. 

He  told  them  about  Teddy  and  his  mother — 
about  Teddy's  vision  and  his  own. 

"I  don't  say  I  know  what  to  make  of  it.  I'm 
not  at  all  sure  that  we're  obliged  to  explain  that 
sort  of  thing  unless  we're  scientists  or  psy- 
chologists. It  seems  to  me  that  when  beauty 
and  comfort  flash  on  us  at  a  time  of  great  need, 
we're  at  liberty  to  take  them  for  what  they 
seem  to  be,  even  if  we  don't  understand  them." 

As  his  hand  lay  on  the  arm  of  the  chair,  Jennie 
kissed  it  again  and  again.  It  was  the  first  spon- 
taneous affection  she  had  ever  shown  him,  and, 
though  it  moved  him  with  a  stirring  strange  and 
fundamental,  he  felt  that  with  the  awesome 
things  so  fresh  in  their  minds,  the  time  had  not 
yet  come  to  respond  to  it.  It  was  one  more 
impulse  to  gather  force  by  being  restrained  a 
little  longer. 

"  It  isn't  as  if  this  thing  stood  alone.  A  great 
many  people  have  had  experiences  like  it.  They 
may  be  no  more  than  fancy,  just  as  some  people 
say;  but  I  do  know  this:  that  by  what  he  saw 
Teddy  was  helped  to  do  what  he  had  to  do,  and 
that  for  me — 

"Yes,  Bob,"  Gladys  pleaded.  "What  was  it 
for  you?" 

"Something  real — and  assuring — and  beautiful 

— and  comforting — and  glorious."     He  uttered 

the  words  slowly,  as  if  selecting  his  terms.  "  More 

than  that,"  he  went  on,  "it  was  something  that's 

29  439 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

given  me  a  happiness  I  can't  describe  but  which 
I  should  like  to  share  with  you — which  perhaps 
I  shall  be  able  to  share  with  you — as  we  get  to 
know  one  another  better — and  time  goes  on." 

The  little  snub-nosed  face,  something  like 
Pansy's,  was  lifted  to  him  adoringly. 

"Are  we  going  to  be  your  very  own,  Bob?" 

"Yes,  Gladys,  my  very  own." 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

HOW  can  we  be  your  very  own  when — you 
don't  know  anything  about  me?" 

Gussie  and  Gladys  had  gone  up  to  get  some 
sleep.  Jennie  was  crouched,  not  against  the 
arm  of  the  chair,  as  before,  but  against  Bob's 
knee.  Still  pressing  back  the  instincts  of  his 
passion,  he  did  no  more  than  let  his  hand  rest 
lightly  on  her  hair. 

"I  know  this  much  about  you,  Jennie — that 
after  all  we've  gone  through  we're  welded  to- 
gether. Nothing  can  separate  us  now — no  past— 
nor  anything  you  could  tell  me." 

"Is  that  why  you  don't  want  to  know?" 

"I  don't  want  to  know  now.  That's  all  I'm 
saying.  Things  are  settled  for  us.  They're 
settled  and  sealed.  It's  what  we  get  out  of  so 
much  that's  terrible,  that  we  don't  have  to  de- 
bate that  point  any  more.  We  may  have  to 
adapt  ourselves  to  conditions  we  don't  know 
anything  about  as  yet — but  it  will  be  a  matter 
of  adapting,  not  of  cutting  loose.  What  should 
I  be  if  I  were  to  cut  loose  from  you  and  the  girls 
now,  Jennie  ?  What  should  you  be  if  you  were 
to  cut  loose  from  me?" 

She  pressed  her  cheek  against  his  knee. 

"We'd  die,"  she  said,  simply. 
441 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

**So  there  you  are!  I  know  what  you  mean. 
I'd  die,  too.  That  is,  we  mightn't  die  out- 
wardly; but  something  would  be  so  killed  in  us 
that  we'd  never  be  really  alive  again.  So  why 
try  to  pull  apart  what  life  has  soldered  into  one?" 

"But  you  don't  know!" 

"Yes,  I  do.  I  know  more  than  you  think. 
I  know  that  the  things  that  trouble  you  are 
dreams  and  that  our  life  together  is  reality. 
You'll  tell  me  the  dreams  as  we  go  on — a  little 
at  a  time — and  I'll  show  you  that  you've  waked 
from  them.  I  know  there  are  things  to  explain; 
but  I  know,  too,  that  there's  an  explanation.  But 
I  don't  want  the  explanation  yet.  I'm — I'm  too 
tired,  Jennie.  I  want  to  rest.  And  I  can't  rest 
unless  we  all  rest  together — you  with  me — and 
the  girls  with  us — in  a  kind  of  quiet  acceptance 
of  the  things  that  have  happened — and  in  the — 
I  hardly  know  how  to  express  it — but  in  the 
tranquillity  of  love.  I  wonder  if  you  understand 
me?" 

She  murmured: 

"I  don't  know  that  I  understand  you,  Bob — 
quite — but  I  do —  I  do  love  you.  It's — it's  differ- 
ent from  love — it's — it's  more.  It's  like — like 
melting  into  you — " 

"That's  love,  Jennie.  It  isn't  anything  differ- 
ent. It's  just — love." 

"But  you're  so  big — " 

"And  you're  so  little — so  wee.  Don't  you  see? 
— that's  it!  That's  the  compensating  thing  in 
nature.  It's  because  we're  different  that  we  need 

442 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

each  other  and  complete  each  other.  I  can't 
explain  it  as  you'd  explain  a  sum  in  arithmetic. 
I  only  know.  You  complete  me,  Jennie.  As 
I've  said  so  often,  you're  the  other  half  of  me — 

"And  you're  all  of  me — and  more." 

"Then  since  we  know  that,  why  not  do  as  I 
said — just  rest  awhile?  We've  come  up  to  our 
next  ledge,  as  I  was  trying  to  explain  to  you  a 
few  months  ago;  I  know  we  can  camp  here  a  bit; 
and  if  we've  had  some  scratches  in  the  climb  we 
can  talk  of  them  by  and  by.  We've  learned  the 
one  big  thing  we  needed  to  know — that  we 
belong  together,  that  we  can't  be  torn  apart. 
Just  for  now,  why  can't  that  be  enough  for  us?" 

"It  will  be  enough  if  you  will  let  me  tell  you 
that — that  what  I've  said  about  Hubert  wasn't— 
wasn't  as  bad  as  perhaps  you  think.  I  don't  say 
it  mightn't  have  been;  it  was  as  bad  as  that  in — 
in  intention;  but  the  magic  cloak  of  your  love 
which  you  used  to  write  about  seemed  to  hang 
round  me — that's  the  only  way  I  can  put  it — : 

"That  '11  do,  Jennie.  Don't  try  to  say  any 
more  now.  It's  only  what — in  some  way — I  can't 
tell  you  how — I  know  already." 

He  knew  she  was  crying,  but  he  let  her  cry. 
He  would  have  cried  himself,  only  that,  since 
the  vision  at  Bond's  Corner,  he  felt  this  extraor- 
dinary happiness.  While  his  reason  would  have 
striven  to  accept  the  psychologist's  explanation 
his  inner  self  was  convinced  of  Teddy's  delight 
in  beginning  his  next  experiment.  He  himself 
was  tired,  but  at  peace — tired,  but  no  longer 

443 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

with  a  need  of  sleep — only  with  the  need  of  being 
quiet  with  a  sense  of  fulfillment. 

There  were  tears  in  her  voice  as  she  whispered, 
brokenly: 

"Is  it  wrong,  Bob,  to  feel  so — so  comforted — 
when  momma  is  lying  upstairs — and  darling 
Teddy  is—" 

"We  can't  choose  the  way  by  which  comfort 
comes  to  us,  Jennie  darling.  Things  happen 
which  we  don't  want  to  have  happen,  and  yet 
they  can  work  together  for  good  if  we  only  give 
them  half  a  chance — " 

He  was  interrupted  by  the  loud,  sweet  thrilling 
of  a  thrush.  Jennie  raised  her  head  in  surprise, 
looking  at  the  pallid  shimmer  through  the 
curtained  window. 

"It's  day!" 

They  were  both  on  their  feet. 

"Yes,  Jennie;  it's  day — again.    Let's  go  out." 

They  went  as  they  were,  bareheaded  like 
children,  into  the  purity  of  morning.  Pansy, 
disturbed  by  the  many  strange  auras  in  the  house, 
scampered  ahead  of  them,  relieved  by  the 
escape.  The  street  was  still  asleep,  empty,  clean, 
with  every  lawn  patch  and  garden  bed  drenched 
with  dew.  Only  the  birds  and  the  flowers  were 
waking  to  the  light. 

Turning  toward  the  cliffs  and  the  river,  their 
talk  became  more  practical.  Bob  suggested  to 
Jennie  what  his  father  had  suggested  to  him. 
Mr.  Huntley  was  going  to  Europe  in  connection 
with  some  new  European  loan.  The  proposal 

444 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

was  that  Bob  should  go  with  him.  The  trip 
might  last  six  months. 

"And  if  I  go,"  he  added,  "we  both  go.  We 
should  have  a  few  weeks  to  settle  things  finally 
here—" 

"Oh,  but,  Bob — how  could  I  go  and — and 
leave  the  two  girls?  They  need  me  more  than 
ever  now.  I'm  not  only  their  sister,  but  their 
mother." 

"Why  shouldn't  they  come  with  us?  I'd  love 
having  them.  Six  months  over  there  would 
make  a  break  with  what  they've  been  through 
here;  and  when  we  come  back,  Edith  has  things 
she's  going  to  suggest — " 

"That  would  be  heavenly,  Bob;  but — but  the 
money  ? " 

"The  money's  all  right.  In  my  new  job  at  the 
bank  I've  a  bigger  salary — five  thousand;  and 
now  that  dad's  giving  Edith  ten  thousand  a  year 
as  allowance,  he's  giving  me  the  same.  That's  a 
pretty  good  income  to  begin  with,  besides  which, 
dad — you'll  have  to  know  dad,  Jennie — he 
doesn't  want  me  to  spare  any  money  while  we're 
— we're  passing  through  this — this  crisis." 

"And  your  mother's  lovely.     I  know  that." 

"Yes;  mother's  splendid,  too.  So's  Edith. 
You'll  find  that  they  all  want — want  to  make  up 
to  you — and  to  the  girls — for — 

But  he  didn't  say  for  what  because  they  came 
to  where  they  saw  above  the  cloud-wrapt  city  the 
glory  of  chrysoprase,  turquoise,  and  topaz  which 
precedes  the  sunrise  and  takes  the  breath  away. 

445 


THE  EMPTY  SACK 

"Oh,  look!" 

"Oh,  look!" 

Instinctively  they  clasped  hands  as  they  stood 
on  the  edge  of  the  flowery  precipice,  watching 
the  chrysoprase  yellow  into  saffron,  and  the  tur- 
quoise melt  into  sapphire,  while  the  topaz  became 
light. 

Then  silently,  above  the  wraithlike  towers  and 
cubes  and  battlements,  slipped  the  rim  of  gold. 

"There  it  is,  Bob!" 

He  drew  her  to  him,  holding  her  close. 

"Yes;  there  it  is  again,  Jennie — always  coming 
back  to  us!  The  last  time  we  were  here  we  had 
only  the  moonrise;  and  now  it  is  the  sun — the 
sun!" 

Her  head  lay  against  his  shoulder;  and  as  the 
rim  became  an  orb  the  cloud-built  vision  of  Man- 
hattan was  touched  with  flecks  of  fire.  Within 
its  heart  lay  Broadway,  Fifth  Avenue,  Wall 
Street,  and  the  Bowery,  shops,  churches,  brothels, 
and  banks,  all  passions,  hungers,  yearnings,  and 
ambitions,  all  national  impulses  worthy  and  de- 
testable, all  human  instincts  holy  and  unclean, 
all  loveliness,  all  lust,  all  charity,  all  cupidity, 
all  secret  and  suppressed  desire,  all  shameless 
exposure  on  the  housetops,  all  sorrow,  all  sin,  all 
that  the  soul  of  man  conceives  of  as  evil  and  good 
— and  yet,  with  no  more  than  these  few  miles  of 
perspective,  and  this  easy  play  of  light,  trans- 
lated into  beauty,  uplifting,  unearthly,  and 
ineffable. 

THE    END 


